Acta Geographica Sinica ›› 2008, Vol. 63 ›› Issue (1): 83-92.doi: 10.11821/xb200801009

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The Approach for Gridding Data Derived from Historical Cropland Records of the Traditional Cultivated Region in China

LIN Shanshan11,2, ZHENG Jingyun1, HE Fanneng1   

  1. 1. Institute of Geographic Sciences and Natural Resources Research, CAS, Beijing 100101, China;
    2. Graduate University of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing 100039, China
  • Received:2007-03-26 Revised:2007-09-27 Online:2008-01-25 Published:2008-01-25
  • Supported by:

    National Natural Science Foundation of China, No.40471007; Knowledge Innovation Program of CAS, No.KZCX2-YW-315

Abstract:

Recent studies have demonstrated the importance of LUCC change with climate and ecosystem simulation, but the result could only be determined precisely if a high-resolution underlying land cover map is used. While the efforts based on satellites have provided a good baseline for present land cover, what the next advancement in the research about LUCC change required is the development of reconstruction of historical LUCC change, especially spatially-explicit historical dataset. Being different from other similar studies, this study is based on the analysis of historical land use patterns in the traditional cultivated region of China. Taking no account of the less important factors, slope and population patterns were selected as the major drivers of reclamation in ancient China, and were used to design the Chinese Historical Cropland Data Gridding Model (at a 60 km×60 km resolution), which is an empirical model for allocating the historical cropland inventory data spatially to grid cells in each political unit. Then we use this model to reconstruct the cropland distribution of the study area in 1820, and test the result by prefectural cropland data of 1820, which is from the historical documents. The statistical analyzing result shows that the model can simulate the patterns of the historical cropland's distribution in the traditional cultivated region efficiently.

Key words: approach, gridding data, Chinese historical cropland records