Precise Estimation For Mountain Arable Land Area Of Lincheng County Based On Gis & Rs

The total arable land area in China decreases at about 950 thousand hm(2)/yr in recent ten years, and gross population increases at about 6 parts per thousand every year. In the near future, the confliction among population, food and arable land is becoming more and more violent. While promoting yield per unit area, it is an alternative way to find potential arable land and food sources. Therefore, we pay more attention to the huge mountainous areas which occupy 68% country land. In mountainous areas, because of the indetermination of planting plan, some assarts especially lean terra are not counted into statistical data of arable land. Precise estimation for mountain arable land area may help us to approximately calculate the potential food output (include plant or fruit) in every mountain in China. Nowadays the information technologies such as GIS and RS support this possibility.Based on GIS & RS technology, this paper presents a case study to precisely estimate mountain arable land area for Lincheng County which is located in Taihang Mountain area, northern China. The distribution of arable land area in this county is determinated after the land use cover is analyzed in detail by remote sensing technology. The attributes of mountain arable land (include slope, DEM, aspect and so on) are analyzed minutely with GIS and DEM. The research result shows a difference of arable land amounting to 9951.72 hm(2) between estimating result and statistical data.