Abstract
Reconstructions of historical cropland area and spatial distribution are necessary for studying human effects on the environment due to agricultural development. To understand the current status of reconstructions of cropland area and its spatial distribution in the mid-eleventh century in the traditional agricultural area of China, we compared three available datasets: the historic cropland inventories-based HE dataset, the population-based History Database of the Global Environment (HYDE) dataset, and the PJ dataset. The results indicate that the HYDE and PJ datasets estimated the regional mean cropland area fraction (a ratio of cropland area to total land area, hereafter, CAF) for the study area to be 0.12 and 0.09, respectively, both of which were lower than the HE estimation of 0.18. Moreover, both the HYDE and PJ datasets have a poor ability to capture the spatial distribution of the historical CAF. The HYDE dataset overestimated the cropland area in North China and underestimated the cropland area in the Yangtze River reach. The HYDE dataset also overestimated the cropland area along the great rivers in North China. The PJ dataset underestimated the cropland area in the old agricultural area and overestimated the cropland area in the relatively new agricultural area. These incorrect spatial distributions from the HYDE and PJ datasets mainly resulted from the underestimation of the historical population and an incorrect approach for the spatial allocation of cropland within China. The incorrect approach was mainly derived from a poor understanding of the historic spatial distribution of cropland. Using the expert knowledge of local historians may be an effective method to reduce the uncertainties in the global historic cropland reconstruction.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Similar content being viewed by others
References
Dirmeyer PA, Niyogi D, de Noblet-Ducoudre N, Dickinson RE, Snyder PK (2010) Impacts of land use change on climate. Int J Climatol 30(13):1905–1907. doi:10.1002/Joc.2157
Economic Geography Department of Institute of Geography, Chinese Academy of Sciences (1980) Agricultural Geography in China. Science Press, Beijing (in Chinese)
Forster P, Ramaswamy V, Artaxo P, Berntsen T, Betts R, Fahey DW, Haywood J, Lean J, Lowe DC, Myhre G (2007) Changes in atmospheric constituents and in radiative forcing. In: Solomon S, Qin DH, Manning M, Chen Z, Marquis M, Averyt KB, Tignor M, Miller HL (eds) Climate change 2007: the physical science basis: contribution of Working Group I to the fourth assessment report of the intergovernmental panel on climate change. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge
Ge QS, Zheng JY, Hao ZX, Shao XM, Wang WC, Luterbacher J (2010) An uncertainty analysis of 2,000 years surface air temperature reconstruction in China. Geophys Res Lett 37:L03703. doi:10.1029/2009GL041281
Ge QS, Dai JH, Xiao SH, Wang HJ (2011) Changes in carbon emission of China in the past 300 years. In: Ge QS, Fang XQ et al (eds) Past and present carbon emission in China. China Meteorological Press, Beijing (in Chinese)
Han ML (1993) Agriculture geography of Northern Song Dynasty. Shanxi Ancient Classics Publishing House, Taiyuan (in Chinese)
He FN, Li SC, Zhang XZ (2012) Reconstruction of cropland area and spatial distribution in the mid-Northern Song Dynasty (AD1004-1085). J Geogr Sci 22(2):359–370. doi:10.1007/s11442-012-0932-3
Kaplan JO, Krumhardt KM, Zimmermann N (2009) The prehistoric and preindustrial deforestation of Europe. Quat Sci Rev 28(27–28):3016–3034. doi:10.1016/j.quascirev.2009.09.028
Kaplan JO, Krumhardt K, Zimmermann N (2012) The effect of land use and climate change on the carbon cycle of Europe over the past 500 years. Glob Change Biol 18:902–914. doi:10.1111/j.1365-2486.2011.02580.x
Klein Goldewijk K (2001) Estimating global land use change over the past 300 years: the HYDE database. Glob Biogeochem Cycle 15(2):417–433. doi:10.1029/1999GB001232
Klein Goldewijk K, van Drecht G (2006) HYDE 3: current and historical population and land cover. In: Bouwman AF, Kram T, Klein Goldewijk K (eds) Integrated modeling of global environmental change: an overview of Image 2.4. Netherlands Environmental Assessment Agency, Bilthoven, pp 93–111
Klein Goldewijk K, Ramankutty N (2004) Land cover change over the last three centuries due to human activities: the availability of new global data sets. GeoJournal 61(4):335–344
Klein Goldewijk K, Beusen A, van Drecht G, de Vos M (2011) The HYDE 3.1 spatially explicit database of human-induced global land-use change over the past 12,000 years. Glob Ecol Biogeogr 20(1):73–86. doi:10.1111/j.1466-8238.2010.00587.x
Li BB, Fang XQ, Ye Y, Zhang XZ (2010) Accuracy assessment of global historical cropland datasets based on regional reconstructed historical data—a case study in Northeast China. Sci China Earth Sci 53(11):1689–1699. doi:10.1007/s11430-010-4053-5
Lin SS, Zheng JY, He FN (2009) Gridding cropland data reconstruction over the agricultural region of China in 1820. J Geogr Sci 19(1):36–48. doi:10.1007/s11442-009-0036-x
Liu M and Tian H (2010) China’s land-cover and land-use change from 1700 to 2005: estimations from high-resolution satellite data and historical archives. Glob Biogeochem Cycles 24: GB3003. doi:10.1029/2009GB003687
Liu JY, Liu ML, Zhuang DF, Zhang ZX, Deng XZ (2003) Study on spatial pattern of land-use change in China during 1995–2000. Sci China Earth Sci 46(4):373–384. doi:10.1360/03yd9033
McEvedy C, Jones R (1978) Atlas of World population history. Penguin Books, Harmondsworth
Pielke RA, Adegoke J, Beltran-Przekurat A, Hiemstra CA, Lin J, Nair US, Niyogi D, Nobis TE (2007) An overview of regional land-use and land-cover impacts on rainfall. Tellus B 59(3):587–601. doi:10.1111/j.1600-0889.2007.00251.x
Pongratz J, Reick C, Raddatz T, Claussen M (2008) A reconstruction of global agricultural areas and land cover for the last millennium. Global Biogeochem Cycle 22(3):1–16. doi:10.1029/2007gb003153
Pongratz J, Raddatz T, Reick CH, Esch M, Claussen M (2009) Radiative forcing from anthropogenic land cover change since AD 800. Geophys Res Lett 36:1–5. doi:10.1029/2008gl036394
Ramankutty N, Foley JA (1999) Estimating historical changes in global land cover: croplands from 1700 to 1992. Glob Biogeochem Cycle 13(4):997–1027. doi:10.1029/1999gb900046
Steyaert LT, Knox RG (2008) Reconstructed historical land cover and biophysical parameters for studies of land atmosphere interactions within the eastern United States. J Geophys Res 113:D02101. doi:10.1029/2006JD008277
Strack JE, Pielke RA Sr, Steyaert TL, Knox RG (2008) Sensitivity of June near-surface temperatures and precipitation in the eastern United States to historical land cover changes since European settlement. Water Resour Res 44:W11401. doi:10.1029/2007WR006546
Thompson RS (2000) BIOME 300: understanding the impacts of human activities on land cover over the past 300 years. IGBP Newslett 43:2–3
Tian H, Melillo J, Lu C, Kicklighter D, Liu M, Ren W, Xu X, Chen G, Zhang C, Pan S, Liu J, Running S (2011) China’s terrestrial carbon balance: contributions from multiple global change factors. Glob Biogeochem Cycles 25:GB1007. doi:10.1029/2010GB003838
Wu S (2000) The history of Chinese population, vol III. Fudan University Press, Shanghai, pp 1–655 (in Chinese)
Acknowledgments
This research was supported by the China Global Change Research Program (2010CB950102) from the Ministry of Science and Technology of China, National Natural Science Foundation of China (Grant No. 41001122; 40971061), and Strategic Priority Research Program (XDA05080100) from the Chinese Academy of Sciences.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Rights and permissions
About this article
Cite this article
Zhang, XZ., He, FN. & Li, SC. Reconstructed cropland in the mid-eleventh century in the traditional agricultural area of China: implications of comparisons among datasets. Reg Environ Change 13, 969–977 (2013). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10113-012-0390-6
Received:
Accepted:
Published:
Issue Date:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10113-012-0390-6