Arable land

ust arat ent an So far a large number of studies have been carried out to examine land use changes in rapidly urbanizing areas (Wu et al., 2006; Quan et al., 2007). Remote sensing is one of the most important information sources for deriving land cover information. Once land cover changes are identified, it is possible to examine their spatiotemporal variations. For instance, Wang et al. (2001) analyzed the spatiotemporal characteristics of land use and land cover change. They concluded that cultivated land, water area, built-up or non-arable land area were on increase while forest and grassland decreased. Twumasi and Merem (2005) examined arable land loss in central Mississippi at the county level between 1987 and 2002. Liu and Li (2006) studied regional disparity in the changes of agricultural land use in China with a focus on land us