quota of crop land in each province of western China every year,
and farmers who agree to stop cultivating these lands would
receive subsidies to cover their loss. However, no quota is
established to stop cultivating crop land in eastern China, and it
is a farmer’s own decision if the crop land that suffers soil erosion
should be converted to forest or grassland.
Meanwhile, China has also experienced rapid urbanization. The
urban area in the eastern coastal provinces increased from
909,721 ha in 1990 to 3,294,289 ha in 2010, a 262.1% increase
according to remote sensing image interpretation. The urban
population had reached 669 million, and the gross domestic
production (GDP) had increased to 40,326 billion Chinese yuan by
the end of 2010 (State Statistical Bureau, 2011). Now China is
ranked as the world’s second largest economy.
Rapid urbanization has caused changes in cropping systems and
other land-use classes. Those changes in farmlands would further
affect the soil erosion rate and agricultural production in eastern
China. However, no studies have a nalysed the relationships among
urbanization, soil erosion, cropping systems, and agricultural
production. The Shandong Peninsula is an area in eastern China
that suffers extensive soil erosion and rapid urbanization, and was
therefore selected for our study. Our objectives were to analyze the