The Feasibility of‘Increasing vs. Decreasing Balance’ Land-Use Policy in Mountain Areas

Cultivated land protections and construction land use controls have contained Chinese urban construction land expansion to some extent;however,the continued demand for construction land must be satisfied.The‘increasing vs.decreasing balance’land-use policy is an important means for rural construction land consolidation and its suitability in mountain areas with particular resource conditions and land-use patterns remains unevaluated.In this study,Mentougou District in Beijing was chosen as an example.Methods of remote sensing image interpretation,GIS software and field surveys were used for analyzing and discussing the feasibility of‘increasing vs.decreasing balance’land-use policy,from aspects of land cover and farmer land use.We found that the acreage of rural residential land and mining land on present land-use is inconsistent with land-cover areas.Therefore,the increment of construction land will be greater than the decrement,and accordingly ecological land will be lost to some extent in the policy implementation process.The special natural conditions in mountain areas affect the quality of new cultivated land from land reclamation,which will increase the quality gap between occupied and supplementary cultivated land.Moreover,the low comparative benefit and expansion of the farming radius will have a strong influence on farmers’decisions.Promoting mountainous rural construction land consolidation should be done via optimal allocation of construction land,the improvement of land use efficiency based on resource advantages,rural economic type and development tendency.