Study on Spatio-Temporal Pattern Changes and Prediction of Arable Land Abandonment in Developed Area: Take Pingyang County as an Example

The problem of arable land abandonment has become increasingly prominent in China as an important hidden danger of regional and national grain security. Therefore, it is necessary to fully understand its developmental mechanism in order to improve land protection policies and maintain the sustainable use of arable land. This study took Pingyang County in the Yangtze River Delta Economic Zone as an example. Based on remote sensing image data in 2000, 2010, and 2018, the landscape pattern index was used to reveal the changes in the landscape pattern of abandoned land in the study area, and the FLUS model was used to simulate the spatial and temporal distribution changes in abandoned land in the study area in 2028. The results showed that the abandoned areas in the study area spread rapidly from 2000 to 2018, the area of abandoned land increased nearly 12 times in the past 18 years, and the areas with a high abandonment rate were concentrated in the western and northwestern mountainous areas of the study area. In the view of the landscape pattern, the areas with a high fragmentation degree of abandoned land gradually shifted to the western mountainous areas from 2000 to 2018, and the areas with high landscape complexity of abandoned land gradually shifted from the middle to the northern and western areas. The simulation results of abandoned land showed that the high-value areas of abandoned land rate in the study area would be more concentrated by 2028. Among them, the abandoned land rate of arable land in the northwest would increase to 15.76-24.89%, while the landscape fragmentation and complexity of abandoned land would be slightly lower than that in 2018. Finally, some countermeasures were proposed for the protection and sustainable utilization of cultivated land resources.