Spatial Analysis of Cultivated Land Productivity and Health Condition: A Case Study of Gaoping City, China

Cultivated land production capacity (PC) is the basis for national food security. Health condition (HC) is an important parameter to indicate the ecological safety of arable land. The policy of “the trinity protection of quantity, quality, and ecology of cultivated land” is one of the important protection directions currently being implemented in China. However, the existing evaluation systems are diverse and overlapping, which mainly focus on the quality and production potential of cultivated land, with less attention paid to the health status and the relationship between them in China. In this study, a comprehensive PC evaluation system including factors such as climate, landform, soil, and utilization was constructed, and an HC evaluation system including internal and external factors was established to support the requirements of the trinity pattern protection policy. These new evaluation systems were applied in Gaoping city, China. The results showed that the average PC index was 1617.35 and ranged between 98.40 and 4321.53, with the largest area of the higher-grade accounting for 36.37% of the total cultivated land. The spatial distribution of PC showed a gradual decrease from the southwest to northeast regions. The average score of the HC of arable land in Gaoping was 79.86 and showed an increasing trend of low in the middle areas and high in the edge regions, which revealed the opposed spatial characteristics between human activity and health status. Approximately 2637.86 ha of the cultivated land was at the imbalance stage, indicating that this is where managers needed to focus. In general, the study offered a reference and a scientific basis for evaluating PC and HC and provided support information for sustainable cultivated land management.