Identifying the potential construction areas and priorities of well-facilitated farmlands by developing a simple but robust method: A case study in dryland agriculture regions based on public data

• The public cropland data were modified by using a data fusion method. • Modified cropland data were used to detect well-facilitated farmland (WFF) area. • Ecological capacity and slope are top two limited factors for dryland agriculture. • A priority index with vegetation cover and slope was developed in this study. • WFF of Yulin city was scheduled by using the developed priority index. Well-facilitated farmland (WFF) construction is greatly responsible for agricultural sustainable development. How to quantitatively plan the WFF construction distribution and schedule is still challenging. This study thus introduced a simple but robust method, and took the typical dryland Yulin city to spatially identify its potential WFF construction areas and temporally determine construction priorities based on public data. By integrating satellite-observed croplands with survey-based statistical data, this study firstly obtained density maps of constant croplands. We found that constant cropland densities decreased from west to east in Yulin city. Jingbian and Dingbian counties of the west gave relatively dense distributions. Secondly, by overlaying evaluation indictors of WFF construction, we found over 96% of constant croplands had WFF construction potentials. Slope and fractional vegetation coverage (FVC) showed evidently spatial differences, which comprehensively reflected the potentials and difficulties of WFF construction. Therefore, an index SF, by considering normalized slope and FVC, was subsequently introduced to rank potential WFF construction priorities. According to the completion ratio and the assumption that giving priorities to develop better basic condition regions, batches of WFF construction areas were identified under the equal proportion planning scenario for each county (S1). Besides, a scenario of city-wide unified planning (S2) was also discussed. WFF construction areas in S2 were further concentrated in northwestern counties compared to those in S1. Both scenarios recommended that construction priorities were given to northwestern counties. This study could provide valuable references for arranging distributions and schedules of WFF construction.