Xingming Li

Ensuring the synergistic advancement of agricultural pollution reduction and carbon emission mitigation, along with sustainable development, is crucial for achieving the ‘dual carbon’ target and modernizing agriculture. To ensure sustainable agricultural development, this study employs a coupling coordination model to explore the synergistic effects of pollution reduction and carbon emission mitigation in Henan Province, considering the agricultural carbon emissions (ACEs), agricultural non-point source pollution (ANP), and the gross value of agricultural output (GVAO) of 18 cities in Henan from 2010 to 2022 as endogenous variables. A panel vector autoregression (PVAR) model is utilized to analyze the interactive responses between agricultural pollution reduction and carbon emission mitigation and agricultural economic development. The results indicate that the degree of synergy between ACE and ANP in Henan Province has shown a trend towards higher values and a diminishing polarization phenomenon between 2010 and 2022, with most regions having degrees of synergy at higher levels. Furthermore, the interactive response relationships between agricultural pollution reduction and carbon emission mitigation and agricultural economic development reveals that the GVAO in Henan Province has a significant positive impact on both ACE and ANP, and that agricultural pollution reduction and carbon emission mitigation are constrained by agricultural economic development, with no significant bidirectional causal relationship observed overall and a lack of positive interaction in the long term. Finally, ACE, ANP, and GVAO in Henan Province exhibit a strong self-reinforcing mechanism, particularly ACE and GVAO, which show a pronounced self-growth trend. Overall, Henan Province should fully utilize the synergistic effects of agricultural pollution reduction and carbon emission mitigation to achieve coordinated progress in agricultural pollution reduction and carbon emission mitigation, as well as green and sustainable development of the agricultural economy.

Cultivated land ecological compensation (CLEC) is an important way to solve regional development imbalance and cultivated land problems, and the scientific quantification of the ecological value of cultivated land is the key to CLEC. This study quantified the total amount and urgency of CLEC in China’s main grain-producing region using the cropland ecological footprint (EF) and ecosystem service value (ESV) methods. Furthermore, this study analyzed the comprehensive zoning of CLEC considering natural and economic development. The results showed that the spatial distribution of EFs and the ecological carrying capacity of cultivated land in Henan Province are similar, presenting the spatial characteristics of being high in the southeast and low in the northwest; the cultivated land in most of the counties and districts is in a state of ecological surplus, and the cultivated land resources are sufficient to support their own consumption needs. Henan Province as a whole is an ecologically compensated region, with a compensation amount of CNY 1.39 billion, and the total amount of compensation is in a positive value of 94.94%. The Southwest Yu and North Yu economic zone of Henan are the areas of high and low values of cultivated land compensation. The priority compensation region is the most extensive and widely distributed type in the five regions of Henan Province, accounting for 55% of the counties and districts. The degree of compensation is most urgent in the Huanghuai, Southwest Yu, and North Yu economic zones. This study’s findings provide new ideas for the development of differentiated ecological compensation policies, and provide references for the participation of multiple market participants and the diversification of compensation forms.

Ecological security pattern construction is a fundamental approach to ensuring regional ecological security and enhancing human welfare. Taking Henan Province, a typical region of China’s main agricultural production area, as the study area, we use multi-source spatial data to calculate the high-value areas of ecosystem services and identify ecological source sites. On the basis of calculating the degree of land use development and GDP per land and population density to determine high-demand areas of the ecosystem, the ecological resistance surface coefficient is modified with nighttime lighting data, and the ecological corridor between the source site and the high-demand area is extracted using the minimum cumulative resistance model, so as to construct and optimize the regional ecological security pattern. The following results are presented. (1) The total area of ecological source sites in Henan Province is 3.02 × 10⁴ km², accounting for 18.12% of the total study area, which is concentrated in the mountainous areas of East Henan and South Henan. (2) The high-demand area of ecosystem services has a total area of 4.1 × 10⁴ km², accounting for 24.73% of the total study area, mainly concentrated in the central and eastern regions of Henan, with poor spatial matching of ecosystem service supply and demand. (3) The total length of ecological corridors is 1062.3 km, and the overall pattern forms the main corridor axes. The identification of ecological corridors focuses on the ecological demand space and puts forward suggestions for the optimization of the regional ecological security pattern based on it.