Institute of Agricultural Resources and Regional Planning

From Cotton to Wheat–Maize: Farmer Decision-Making and Cropping Structure Transformation in a Smallholder County of China

Adjusting cropping structure is a key way smallholder agriculture adapts to changing labor availability, production costs, mechanization, and agricultural services. Most studies explain such change through macro-level factors—prices, policies, and resource endowments—and pay less...

Household composition and adult-equivalent scales for food consumption expenditures in rural area of China

Purpose Establishing adult-equivalent (AE) scales for rural household food consumption expenditures is crucial for policymakers to set unified benchmarks for living costs in rural China. This study aims to estimate AE scales for food expenditures, providing a standardized tool to...

Reconciling nitrogen fertilization effects on soil nitrification with acidification

Nitrogen (N) fertilization supports nearly half of the global population but disrupts the N cycle. While N addition is assumed to stimulate soil nitrification by increasing substrate supply and nitrifier activity, it may also inhibit nitrification via soil acidification. Resolvin...

Evolution of water clarity across the Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei region over the past four decades (1984–2024): Driven by hydrological expansion and anthropogenic intervention

Given escalating water scarcity and rapid urbanization, characterizing the long-term evolution of surface water environments across the Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei (BTH) region is vital for coordinated regional development. Using Landsat imagery spanning 1984–2024, this study quantifie...

Nitrogen Sources Reshape Microbial Community Assembly and Interaction Networks to Regulate Straw Decomposition and Carbon Release in Cropland Soils of the North China Plain

The decomposition of crop residue is indispensable for carbon (C) cycling in agricultural ecosystems, and nitrogen (N) application has a pronounced effect on this by regulating the C/N ratio and microbial growth strategy. This study investigated how different inorganic and organi...

Spatiotemporal patch identification and multiscale drivers of nonagricultural conversion of cultivated land in the Jianghan Plain

Abstract The nonagricultural conversion of cultivated land (NACCL) poses a major challenge to cultivated land protection and food security in intensive agricultural regions. However, the reliable identification of NACCL in complex agricultural plains remains difficult because cul...