Vertical spatial mismatch of cropland: assessment of gains and losses, driving factors, and governance strategies

Driven by urban expansion, land-finance dependence, and agricultural restructuring, traditional grain croplands are increasingly displaced into high-slope zones, creating a global vertical spatial mismatch known as the slope-climbing of cropland (SCCL). However, fine-grained, process-based assessments of its productivity and ecological losses, as well as its multi-dimensional causal mechanisms, remain poorly understood. This study couples a “cropland slope-climbing index” with “micro-plot tracking” to dynamically quantify net changes in cropland productivity (CLP) and habitat quality. We further establish a three-dimensional “forcing-inducing-pushing” framework to disentangle SCCL’s underlying drivers. Empirical results from China’s Two Lakes Region (2000–2020) indicate that SCCL intensified over time, generating substantial net deficits in both CLP and ecological services. The share of high-slope cropland rose from 15.87% to 17.40%, with net ecological degradation observed in more than 84% of administrative units. Factor detection reveals that the explanatory power of fixed asset investment, the urban construction land growth rate, and the added value of secondary and tertiary industries strengthened continuously, while local government land transfer revenue consistently exerted a dominant structural influence. These findings demonstrate how rigid requisition–compensation balance mandates, driven by land-finance dependence, fuel this unsustainable vertical mismatch. Crucially, our dynamic analysis reveals that ex-post engineering remediation cannot fully offset the baseline losses induced by SCCL. Consequently, we propose a systemic policy framework that integrates cause-based source prevention and loss-type-differentiated correction to mitigate this vertical spatial conflict.