This study aims to clarify the spatial evolution and influencing factors of the cropland and reservoirs in the Economic Belt on the North Slope of Tianshan Mountains (EBTM), particularly for food security and high-quality agriculture in arid areas. The kernel density analysis, center of gravity model, and spatial dislocation index were used to explore the spatial relationship and evolution between cropland and reservoirs in EBTM from 1980 to 2023. The location entropy and geographic detector were used to reveal the dominant factors of spatial imbalance. The results show that: 1) The area of cultivated land in EBTM shared an expansion trend from 1980 to 2023, increasing from 2.25 to 3.37 million hectares, an increase of 50.1%. At the same time, the number of reservoirs in EBTM continued to increase, from 112 to 269, an increase of 140.2%. The reservoir capacity in EBTM shares an increasing trend, growing from 4.0×10⁹ m³ to 1.0×10¹⁰ m³, with a growth rate of 155.0%. As such, the cropland area and reservoir capacity showed an expanding trend. The high-density areas were consistent in space, but the high-value area of the reservoir was significantly smaller than that of cropland. 2) There was a spatial dislocation between the cropland area and the reservoir capacity, but the overall dislocation was smaller. There was a positive correlation on the spatial mismatch between cropland and reservoir capacity in EBTM, accounting for 58.5%. The expansion of the arable land was greater than the replenishment rate of reservoir capacity. 3) There were different spatial preferences for the geographical distribution of the cropland and reservoirs. But they all tended to be close to rivers, with the small slopes and low urbanization rate. The spatial distribution of the cropland was preferred the plains and plateaus with the low altitude, flat slope, near rivers, low urbanization level, and high degree of agricultural mechanization; The spatial distribution of the reservoirs was preferred the plateaus or small/medium undulating mountains with the medium to high altitudes, flat slopes, near rivers, and low levels of urbanization. 4) The spatial distribution of cropland and reservoirs was dominated by the complex factors, among which the total power of agricultural machinery, the output value of the primary industry and the distance from the river dominated the spatial distribution of cropland, and the distance from the river. The altitude and topography dominated the spatial distribution of the reservoir. The factor interaction indicated that the explanation of the inter-factor interaction for the spatial analysis of cultivated land and reservoirs was greater than that of the single factor, indicating the nonlinear and dual factor enhancement. There was the spatial matching of the cropland and reservoirs in EBTM. The finding can provide the scientific support for the decision-making on the "land determined by water" strategy, as well as the optimization and regulation of water—land resources in arid areas.

Facility agriculture, with greenhouse facilities as its cornerstone, serves as a critical driver of agricultural modernization by enhancing productivity, optimizing spatial allocation, and mitigating phenological constraints. Despite its strategic importance, systematic analyses of the spatiotemporal evolution of greenhouse facilities distributions at the national scale remain limited, hindering evidence-based policymakin. This study employs spatial autocorrelation and standard deviation ellipse methods to analyze the distribution dynamics of China’s agricultural greenhouse facilities from 2010 to 2022, to provide data support for national-level facility agriculture planning, management, and policy formulation. The results show that:1) From 2010 to 2022, China’s agricultural greenhouse facilities exhibited a new pattern characterized by "doubled total coverage, multiplied high-density clusters, western expansion, and multi-polar development". The greenhouse facilities area surged from 55 5460 hm² to 1 295 480 hm², with an increase of 133%. The number of Class V counties increased from 3 to 8, Class IV counties increased from 6 to 30, and Class III and Class II counties also increased, while the number of Class I counties without greenhouse facilities decreased from 1 620 to 985. 2) The global Moran’s I index declined from 0.27 to 0.23 during 2010 to 2022, indicating that although greenhouse facilities still show a mild clustering trend, the overall distribution was becoming more dispersed. The number of high-high clustering units initially decreased and then rebounded. There were 125 high-high clustering units in 2010 (mainly were located in Shandong and Liaoning), decreased to 105 in 2016, and increased to 127 in 2022, with the increase concentrated in Yunnan. The number of low-low clustering units continued to expand from 526 to 761, mainly were located in the central and western provinces such as Sichuan, Hunan, and Guangxi. Policy guidance, market demand, and resource endowment together drove the shift of the pattern of agricultural greenhouse facilities from “the dual-core pattern in the east” to"stable in the east, rising in the west, and multi-polar development." 3) From 2010 to 2022, China's agricultural greenhouse facilities showed an overall expansion trend, though with notable variations across different time periods. From 2010 to 2016, the dominant trend was "rapid increase" with 41.32% of counties experienced growth rates exceeding 80%, mainly distributed in Hebei and Shanxi. Only 8.06% of counties experienced rapid decreases, mainly in Yunnan and Anhui. From 2016 to 2022, due to the stricter policies, the number of counties with trend of "rapid increase" decreased, and the hotspot was shifted to Yunnan and Henan. The number of counties with trend of "rapid/moderate decrease" increased to 751, mainly in Shanxi and Guangdong, with contraction were observed in Shandong and Hebei. The spatial centroid shifted from Pingyuan County, Shandong Province, to Weihui City, Henan Province, with a movement of 177.07 km to the west and 196.96 km to the south. The long axis of the standard deviation ellipse increased by 188.21 km from 2010 to 2016 and by 130.59 km from 2016 to 2022, indicating a slowdown in the speed of expansion. Meanwhile, 99.47% of greenhouse facilities were distributed below an altitude of 2 000 meters, and 97.38% of greenhouse facilities were distributed on slopes below 4°. The proportion of greenhouse facilities in the altitude range of 1500-2000 meters had increased from 1.83% to 9.25%, and those on slopes above 4°increased from 1.68% to 3.86%, indicating that greenhouse facilities were steadily penetrating higher gradients and more complex terrains. These findings deepen the understanding of the dynamic of the spatial and temporal patterns of China’s agricultural greenhouse facilities and can provide scientific support for the planning and management decision-making.

Irrigation agriculture has become integral to global food production because it drastically improves productivity. In the past 20 years, driven by food demand and policy guidance, China has carried out large-scale cropland improvement projects on the land consolidation of dryland-to-paddy conversion (LC-DtPC). However, the unclear spatial pattern and the suitability of LC-DtPC have limited the adaptive management of LC-DtPC and the scientific protection and sustainable utilization of arable land. Therefore, this study used 30 m×30 m remote sensing data for five periods from 2000 to 2020 to reveal the spatial pattern of LC-DtPC of cropland in China and its conversion characteristics and then constructed a suitability evaluation system of LC-DtPC by selecting 11 indexes from four dimensions, namely, topography, climate, soil, and tillage, to assess the spatial matching effect of LC-DtPC project implementation and explore adaptive management zoning and strategies. The results showed that the area of LC-DtPC in China from 2000 to 2020 amounted to 1 297.04×10⁴ hm², accounting for 7.31% of the total cultivated land. The LC-DtPC was mainly concentrated in the Sanjiang Plain, Jianghan Plain, Central Henan Province, East of Sichuan Province, and Central Jiangsu Province. There was a large increase in the LC-DtPC area in 2005-2010 and 2015-2020. In general, the suitability of the implementation of LC-DtPC in the drylands of China was not favorable. Among them, 5.14%, 10.49%, 17.34%, 30.66%, and 36.37% of the national dryland area was suitable, more suitable, generally suitable, barely suitable, and unsuitable, respectively. In terms of spatial perspective, the suitability of LC-DtPC was better in Southeast China and Northeast China. Among them, terrain and irrigation water sources were the main influencing factors. Then, the raster superposition analysis was used to overlay the results of the LC-DtPC with the suitability evaluation to analyze the effect of spatial matching for the implementation of LC-DtPC. Through the spatial matching statistics, it found that the overall effect of LC-DtPC in China from 2000 to 2020 was unsatisfactory. The areas of LC-DtPC that were fully matched, more matched, generally matched, barely matched and unmatched were 88.13×10⁴, 373.13×10⁴, 456.43×10⁴, 229.62×10⁴ and 149.71×10⁴ hm², respectively, and their percentages were 6.80%, 28.77%, 35.19%, 17.70% and 11.54%, respectively. Therefore, adaptive management of LC-DtPC was important. This study attempted to analyze the mechanism of adaptive management of LC-DtPC and proposed a hierarchical zoning management method for LC-DtPC to guide the implementation and management of LC-DtPC. In the future, government departments can divide different adaptive management zones for LC-DtPC based on suitability priority levels, such as priority remediation zones, key adjustment zones, reserve restriction zones, and orderly withdrawal zones. At the same time, according to the regional characteristics, the government can formulate differentiated LC-DtPC management strategies from planning, implementation, evaluation, and monitoring. This study can provide a scientific basis for arable land protection, ecological protection, and restoration planning of national land space, and the delineation of the two zones.