Remote Sensing Reveals How Agricultural Restructuring Spatially Organizes Non-Cropland Ecological Restoration in the Mu Us Sandy Land

Agricultural expansion is usually viewed as ecological pressure in dryland agro-pastoral ecotones, yet regional greening can also emerge alongside agricultural restructuring. This paradox is particularly important where cropland expansion, ecological restoration, and water-limited landscapes overlap. Using the Mu Us Sandy Land of northern China, we examined whether greening from 2000 to 2020 represented genuine non-cropland recovery and whether its spatial organization was associated with agricultural restructuring. Annual fractional vegetation cover (FVC), land use/cover, and environmental data were used to decompose regional greening and construct an Agricultural Opportunity Space Index (AOSI) based on cropland boundary proximity, local cropland density, interface intensity, and agricultural core-area influence. Ecological non-cropland improvement accounted for 84.30% of the total FVC increase, whereas the change in cropland share contributed only 2.30%. Recovery was broad-based, with FVC rising across low, median, and high quantiles and 68.97% of valid ecological non-cropland pixels showing significant greening. Restoration occurrence and mean FVC change (ΔFVC) generally increased along the AOSI gradient, while high-opportunity zones hosted stronger, more recurrent, and more stable restoration hotspots. These findings suggest that agricultural restructuring shaped non-cropland recovery not primarily through land occupation, but through the spatial redistribution of land-use pressure and resource management conditions beyond cropland boundaries.