Abstract:

It is urgent to improve the agricultural land use intensity owing to more people and less land resources. Taking counties in Hebei province as evaluation units, an index system was established from four aspects: land investment degree, utilizing intensity, utilizing efficiency and sustainable development status. The weight of each index was calculated by the entropy method. The agricultural land use intensity during 1985～2005 was calculated by employing the methods of comprehensive index, and the spatial- temporal variance of the agricultural land use intensity was analyzed also in order to provide a basis of policy for intensive and sustainable use of agricultural land in Hebei province. The results show that the agricultural land use intensity was prone to be influenced by land investment degree and took on obviously territorial differences. The agricultural land investment degree and sustainable development status increased during 1985～2005, while the utilizing intensity and efficiency decreased.

Key words: agricultural land, county regional scale, Hebei province, intensive use