Revealing nested archetypes of cropland abandonment based on social-ecological system theory

Cropland abandonment is a key land-use change process within the human-environment system, shaped by diverse environmental and socio-economic determinants. However, many studies overlook the complex interrelationships among these determinants, which may result in the reconfiguration of agricultural landscapes. Here, we developed an analytic framework based on social-ecological system theory to map cropland aban-donment archetypes in Sichuan Province, Southwest China, using a combination of biophysical conditions, proximity characteristics, socio-economic determinants, and the extent, cumulative proportion, and spatial configuration of abandoned croplands. We implemented self-organizing feature maps using a nested clustering approach, which resulted in 25 sub-archetypes and 6 meta-archetypes. We used random forest regressions to quantify the relative importance of explanatory determinants influencing archetype geographies. Our results revealed diverse cropland abandonment archetypes, with meta-archetype area shares ranging from 4.4 % to 48.4 %. The most widespread archetype was characterized by favorable terrain, low cropland per capita, and low cumulative proportions of abandonment. Determinants of meta-archetypes varied in their importance but consistently highlighted the role of environmental determinants (i.e., topography, temperature), as well as productivity-related and socio-economic determinants (i.e., employee wages, pension insurance, high-value crops) as the most important determinants. Our findings argue against one-size-fits-all solutions and are highly relevant to nuance existing regional land-use policies addressing cropland abandonment. They further allow targeting key determinants of cropland abandonment and considering regional and local socio-ecological contexts in decision-making processes.

• Publication year

  2026

• Venue

  Journal of Rural Studies

• Publication date

  2026-02-01

• Fields of study

  Not labeled

• Identifiers
  DOI 10.1016/j.jrurstud.2025.103991
• External record

  Open on Semantic Scholar

• Source metadata

  Semantic Scholar

• No claims are published for this paper.

• No concepts are published for this paper.

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