| China has undergone large-scale urban expansion and rapid loss of cultivated land for more than two decades. The combination of continued growth of Chinese cities, limited arable land, and changes in the composition of domestic food demand puts existing agricultural land at risk for conversion to urban areas, and natural ecosystems at risk for conversion to farmland. Building on econometric modeling, remote sensing, and spatial analysis, this dissertation looks at how urbanization acts as a critical force in shaping agricultural land, providing a better understanding about the main trajectories and mechanisms through which urbanization exerts this influence. It explains the underlying processes of urban land expansion at the national scale and has shown that socioeconomic and policy factors across various administrative levels have exerted fundamental influences on the urban conversion of cultivated land. It has identified a negative relationship between urban expansion and agricultural land use intensity, suggesting that with the control of the effect of land scarcity, the urban conversion of agricultural land drives the decline of agricultural land use intensity. It forecasts future food consumption patterns and land requirements for food for two groups of cities in China and has demonstrated that urbanization can significantly accelerate the rate of transfer towards an affluent diet, which will lead to much higher future land requirements. This dissertation provides clear implications for the connection among urban growth, agricultural land use, agricultural land loss, and agricultural production. |
