The spatiotemporal change of cropland and its impact on vegetation dynamics in the farming-pastoral ecotone of northern China.

Due to the unfavorable soil conditions and water resources, the cropland use pattern in the farming-pastoral ecotone in northern China is complex. The program named "Grain for Green" has accelerated the cropland change. However, the complex cropland and retired cropland are challenging to monitor with remote sensing due to their spatially dispersed and easily confused with spectrally similar land use classes such as nature grasslands and non-cropped fields. Taking farming-pastoral ecotone in the northern foot of the Yinshan Mountains as a case study, we explored a classification approach for complex cropland and retired cropland, which was introduced as a specific land use class by using multi-temporal Landsat TM and OLI images with Google Earth Engine. During 1990-2000, cropland increased with a sharper growth and increased with a slower growth from 2001 to 2010, and then decreased significantly from 2011 to 2019, to lead the cropland area in 2019 was smaller than an area in 1990. We analyzed the spatiotemporal trajectories of retired cropland in 2019 using the Land Use Change Trajectory method to evaluate its source. In our finding, approximately 77% of retired cropland was labelled as cropland before 2019; albeit, not all retired cropland was converted from cropland. Moreover, we qualitatively assessed the vegetation dynamics in the study area by utilizing the long-term NDVI-mean value to reveal that vegetation coverage has shown a continuously increasing trend. It is related to the decline of cropland and the increase of retired cropland at the same rate. Our results highlighted that the "Grain for Green" program had led the vegetation restoration in the farming-pastoral ecotone. Our approach for monitoring cropland and retired cropland can improve the understanding of the driving factors and consequences of these critical land use change trajectories.