Dynamic evaluation of land productivity in China

For making rational and scientific land-use planning, an inventory indicator of land productivity subject to biophysical limitations and human disturbance is required. This study introduces agricultural land productivity (ALP) as the dynamic indicator to measure land productivity, involving factors that affect agricultural production, such as characteristics of climate, soil, and terrain. As a case study of this dynamic indicator, ALP was estimated at county level and aggregated into provincial level in the whole of China. The result shows that ALP increased during 2000–2010 in China, and the ratios of ALP to the actual grain yield were 65.40% and 66.38% in the years 2000 and 2005, respectively. The ALP is an effective dynamic indicator to estimate the land productivity and to represent the basic conditions about the supply of water, energy, nutrients, and the physical basis for plant growth, as well as the local input. ALP estimation could provide supporting information for policy-making about land production planning and land-use management.