Abstract: This paper introduces a measurement method for cultivated land use intensity by using indexes of farming input with its emergy terms, which is applied by taking Poyang Lake Eco-economic Zone as a research object. This paper conducts an analysis of the time series feature of labor intensity, agricultural machinery intensity, fertilizer intensity, pesticide intensity and agricultural film intensity in the study area from 2000 to 2009. Then, taking the five emergy indexes as a common basis, temporal and spatial changes of cultivated land use intensity as a whole are analyzed. Results are drawn as follows. 1) In the 10-year period, cultivated land use intensity increases exponentially in the Poyang Lake Eco-economic Zone; the agricultural machinery intensity has the largest proportion of the total inputs, exceeding 99.50%, and increases year by year, which indicates that the agricultural mechanization is the general trend of agricultural development in the zone. 2) The total number of counties belonging to highly and less intensive use of cultivated land is the largest, while that belonging to further and extensive use of cultivated land is the smallest. 3) This zone can be divided into five areas of cultivated land: eastern area with further use, central-eastern area with less intensive use, central area with highly intensive use, southern area of moderate intensive use, and northern area of moderate intensive use. 4) The counties with cultivated land use Intensity level coordinating its economic development increase year by year and the socio-economic development has more and more obviously effects on the cultivated land use intensity. Finally, the paper puts forward some suggestions on development plan of intensive cultivated land use in the Poyang Lake Eco-economic Zone, especially in the counties at different levels of intensive land use.

Key words: cultivated land, intensive use, measurement of input, emergy, Poyang Lake Eco-economic Zone