Increasing proportion of mildly aged population in rural mitigates farmland abandonment in the farming-pastoral ecotone of northern China.

ABSTRACT: Rural population aging has emerged as a widespread phenomenon, which can lead to farmland abandonment and pose unprecedented challenges to agricultural production and ecological sustainability in the farming-pastoral ecotone of northern China (FPENC). The dynamic changes in farmland abandonment from 2000 to 2020 were systematically explored using a trajectory-based land use change detection approach. Binary logit regression models were employed to analyze the driving mechanism of the current farmland abandonment based on 1,195 questionnaires, and then random forest models were used to predict future farmland abandonment trends under various scenarios. The results showed that (1) rural population aging had emerged as a significant challenge for Ulanqab, with the proportion of people aged 60

SUBMITTER: Jin Y 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC12312902 | biostudies-literature | 2025

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature