Driving Mechanisms and Spatial Differentiation of Cultivated Land Non-Agriculturalization in Qixian County

Abstract

Investigating the driving mechanisms and spatial differentiation of cultivated land non-agriculturalization is important for identifying conversion risk and improving regional land use management. Taking Qixian County in Henan Province, China, as the study area, this paper used the identified results of cultivated land non-agriculturalization and constructed 1 km × 1 km grid cells as evaluation units. The grid-based rate of cultivated land non-agriculturalization was used as the dependent variable. From the perspectives of natural conditions, locational conditions, and socioeconomic development, eight driving factors were selected, including elevation, slope, distance to roads, distance to rivers, distance to railways, distance to township centers, night-time lights, and population density. Ordinary least squares, Geodetector, XGBoost, and SHAP were jointly employed to analyze the driving mechanisms and spatial differentiation of cultivated land non-agriculturalization. The results indicate that the process was not controlled by a single factor, but by the combined effects of natural, locational, and socioeconomic factors. The OLS model achieved the highest explanatory power for 2020–2025 (R² = 0.682), followed by 2020–2023 (R² = 0.562), whereas the value for 2023–2025 was much lower (R² = 0.279). Elevation, slope, and night-time lights were the key factors, showing that topographic constraints and human activity intensity jointly shaped the spatial pattern of cultivated land non-agriculturalization in Qixian County.