Analysis of socio-economic driving forces of cultivated land area and its forecast in the upstream of Han River of China

In recent years, the human driving force of changes in cultivated land area is one of the hotspots in land-use change research. The paper took the Han River in southern Shaanxi of china as study area, and thirteen socio-economic indexes, such as total population, urbanization rate of domicile, per capita GDP during 1995-2015 years, were selected. The main socio-economic factors that affected the change of cultivated land area were sifted by grey relativity analysis, principal component analysis, stepwise regression analysis and STRIPAT model. Meanwhile, the change trend of cultivated land in the next 10 years was predicted by scenario analysis. The results show that, among many related factors, the increase of the proportion of the second industry and the proportion of the third industry can lead to the reduction of cultivated land area with different degree, and the increase of urbanization rate of domicile can induce the increases of cultivated land area. Meanwhile, the increase of cultivated land area is fastest among 8 scenarios when urbanization rate of domicile keeps high speed of growth rate, and the proportion of the second industry and the third industry keep low-speed growth rate.