Comparative Study on Changes of Croplands Between North Korea and South Korea During 1990-2015

Studies on long-term change of cropland is of great significance to the utilization of land resources and the implementation of scientific agricultural policies. The Korean Peninsula, adjacent to China, plays an important role in the international environment of Northeast Asia. The Korean Peninsula includes South Korea and North Koreatwo countries that have a great difference in their institutions and economic developments. Therefore, we aim to quantify the spatiotemporal changes of croplands in these two countries using Landsat Thematic Imager (TM) and Operational Land Imager (OLI) imagery, and to compare the differences of cropland changes between the two countries. This paper take full advantage of ODM approach (object-oriented segmentation and decision-tree classification based on multi-season imageries) to obtain the distribution of croplands in 1990 and 2015. Results showed that the overall classification accuracy of cropland data is 91.10% in 1990 and 92.52% in 2015. The croplands were mainly distributed in areas with slopes that were less than 8 degrees and with elevations that were less than 300 m in the Korean Peninsula. However, in other region (slope > 8 degrees or elevation > 300 m), the area and proportion of North Korea's croplands were significantly higher than that of South Korea. Croplands significantly increased by 15.02% in North Korea from 1990 to 2015. In contrast, croplands in South Korea slightly decreased by 1.32%. During the 25 years, policy shift, economic development, population growth, and urban sprawl played primary roles for cropland changes. Additionally, the regional differences of cropland changes were mainly due to different agriculture policies implemented by different countries. The achievements of this study can provide scientific guidance for the protection and sustainability of land resources.