Optimizing the spatial pattern of land use in a prominent grain-producing area: A sustainable development perspective

Spatial patterns are essential for examining the sustainability derived from land systems. Constructing spatial patterns for sustainable land development is now high on the global agenda to guarantee human welfare. However, there is as yet no consensus on the comprehensive framework for optimizing the spatial pattern of land development (SPLD) contrapose a prominent grain-producing area (PGPA). To narrow this gap, we propose a synthetic framework to shape a more reasonable SPLD for a sustainable development strategy by measuring the equilibrium between the production-living-ecological space (PLES) functions and the resource and environment carrying capacity (RECC). Taking a prominent grain-producing area (PGPA) as the object, a case study involving the Jianghan Plain (JHP) in China is conducted, leading to the following novel insights. (i) The quality of PLES and RECC in a PGPA is affected by multiple dimensions: agriculture, ecology, environment, and society. The indices of the PLES function and the RECC have significant spatial heterogeneity. SPLD in regions with fragile ecological environments and strong development is often under overload pressure. (ii) Based on the spatial zoning results of SPLD, the five partitions were taken as the optimized objects, including zones of the eco-economic, model-agricultural, core-living, eco-conservation, and coordinated-development. The land function definition of these five types of zoning covers the production-living-ecological function orientation in a PGPA. (iii) The SPLD optimization framework proposed above has strong universality because it comprehensively considers the multi-dimensional spatial functional needs of PGPA. In this study, an optimization decision framework of SPLD based on measurement and zoning was established for a PGPA. Significantly, the introduced framework is applicable and practical for optimizing SPLD from a sustainable equilibrium perspective, and the findings have considerable implications for sustainable development in prominent grain-producing areas.