Search Results (1,174)

Rapid urban population expansion in semi-arid environments poses considerable challenges for sustainable planning, particularly where demographic growth occurs under environmental constraints. This study examines the statistical association between climatic variability and population change in the Soran district center, Kurdistan Region of Iraq, and develops an exploratory framework for forecasting future demographic trends. It uses the official annual population series compiled by the Statistics Directorate of the Soran Independent Administration for 2010–2024 (15 observations) together with monthly meteorological records for 2015–2024 from the Soran agro-meteorological station. Two properties of the demographic record govern what can be inferred from it. The 2010–2023 values are inter-censal estimates reproduced to within 0.10% by a single declining-growth rule, so goodness-of-fit statistics obtained on that segment measure agreement with an interpolation rule rather than forecasting skill; and the 2024 value derives from the 2024 census round, representing a level shift of +18.4% against a 2.0% per year trend—178 residual standard deviations—rather than a year of growth. Detrended, lagged Spearman correlations across twelve climate–lag combinations yielded no association surviving Holm–Bonferroni correction; because the pre-2024 values are administratively smoothed, this is reported as an inability of the available data to resolve a climate–demography association rather than as evidence of independence. Eight specifications—naïve, drift and linear-trend benchmarks, a second-order polynomial, a log-linear trend, an AIC-selected ARIMA, and two multilayer perceptrons—were compared under identical rolling-origin cross-validation, producing seven one-step-ahead forecasts each. On the inter-censal segment a random walk with drift attained a mean absolute percentage error of 0.087%, better than every fitted specification; on the census fold every specification erred by at least 11,663 persons. The reported 2025–2030 projection is therefore anchored on the 2024 census level with growth extrapolated from its 2011–2023 trend, giving 93,342 residents in 2025 and 101,691 in 2030 (scenario range 100,395–104,064), reproduced to within 488 persons by an ARIMA(0,2,2) with a 2024 step term. Polynomial and log-linear trends fitted across the discontinuity project 2025 values are below the observed 2024 population and are reported as specification failures. The study demonstrates both the potential and the limitations of demographic forecasting in data-scarce semi-arid urban settings and shows that the provenance of an administrative population series materially constrains the claims such a study can make. Full article

Yamdrok Lake, a typical closed inland lake located in the southern Tibetan Plateau, is highly sensitive to climate change and human activities. Although previous studies have reported a declining lake-level trend, the mechanisms underlying the sharp decline since 2005 remain debated. In particular, the disturbance effects of human activities, such as pumped-storage hydropower operations, have not been rigorously characterized, and quantitative attribution under the combined influence of multiple factors remains limited. This study aims to systematically identify the drivers of lake-level changes in Yamdrok Lake during 2000–2023 and to quantify the relative statistical explanatory power of climate change and human activities on lake-level fluctuations using Shapley R² decomposition. We integrated 24 years of hydrological, meteorological, remote-sensing, and hydropower-operation data. Cumulative anomaly analysis, multiple linear regression, and Shapley R² decomposition were employed to establish an attribution model incorporating rainfall, evaporation, temperature, glacier meltwater, and hydropower operation intensity, represented by annual electricity generation. The relative statistical explanatory power of these factors with respect to interannual lake-level changes (ΔH) was quantified using Shapley R² decomposition for different periods, representing the proportion of variance in ΔH explained by each factor within the regression framework rather than absolute physical volumetric contributions, including hydropower-operation and non-operation periods. Results show that the annual mean water level of Yamdrok Lake declined significantly during 2000–2023, with a cumulative decrease of 5.1 m and an accelerated decline after 2005. The dominant controls shifted from an early rainfall–evaporation regime to a systematic water deficit dominated by rising temperature. Temperature increased significantly at a rate of 0.03 °C yr⁻¹ (p < 0.05) and constituted the fundamental driver of the long-term lake-level decline. During the hydropower-operation period (2000–2014), the five factors jointly explained 84.51% of the variance in interannual lake-level changes, with hydropower operation intensity (32.32%), temperature (27.98%), and glacier meltwater (26.54%) being the three largest contributors in terms of statistical explanatory power. During the non-operation period (2015–2023), temperature consistently remained the most important individual contributor, accounting for 34.3–49.5% of the explained variance depending on whether missing glacier meltwater data for 2022–2023 were extrapolated or excluded from the analysis. Warming affects lake levels through two pathways: it directly enhances lake-surface evaporation and simultaneously promotes continuous glacier retreat within the basin. Glacier area decreased by approximately 30.5 km² between 2000 and 2021, thereby weakening the long-term resilience of glacier-meltwater recharge. Consequently, the lake system has shifted from a dynamic balance toward a persistent state in which water losses exceed water inputs. Overall, lake-level changes in Yamdrok Lake represent the combined effects of progressive warming-induced water deficits and superimposed disturbances associated with hydropower operations. By extending observations to 2023 and incorporating dynamic glacier-area and hydropower-operation indicators, this study clarifies the temporal shift in dominant drivers, revises the previous interpretation that attributed lake-level decline primarily to reduced rainfall, and provides a scientific basis for lake-water-resource security assessment and climate-change adaptation on the Tibetan Plateau. Full article

Accurate winter wheat mapping is important for interannual planting-area monitoring, yet models developed independently for each year require repeated sample collection, feature selection, and parameter tuning. This study developed an interpretable cross-year transfer approach for winter wheat mapping in the Tailan River Irrigation District, Xinjiang, China, using Sentinel-1/2 time-series imagery. The model was developed entirely from 2025 source-year data, including feature selection, Bayesian hyperparameter optimization, and model training. The resulting model was then applied directly to the 2023 and 2024 target-year test sets without retraining, retuning, or feature reselection. From 189 optical, SAR, texture, and vegetation-index temporal-change features, SHAP-based selection retained 28 informative variables. The Bayesian-optimized Random Forest model achieved overall accuracies of 93.82% in the 2025 source-year validation and 92.13% and 91.01% in the 2023 and 2024 target-year tests, with corresponding Kappa coefficients of 0.92, 0.90, and 0.89. SHAP and ablation analyses showed that May-to-June vegetation index change rate features derived from NDVI, NDre1, and EVI provided the most consistent phenological information, while Sentinel-1 features supplied complementary structural and backscatter information. The extracted winter wheat area decreased from 11,270.27 ha in 2023 to 9834.97 ha in 2025, consistent with the downward trend in official statistics. These results show that a model developed from a single source year maintained consistent classification performance across the evaluated historical years within the same irrigation district. Full article

Simulation studies of surplus electricity in sugarcane cogeneration almost universally assume stable nominal operation, and the sector literature qualitatively acknowledges that many surplus projects underperform; however, this discrepancy has not been systematically quantified against multiyear operational records. Using daily records from seven harvest seasons (2010–2016; 931 valid days) of a Cuban low-pressure sugar mill and the previously published simulation of its own thermal scheme (Termoazúcar STA 4.1), this study quantifies the discrepancy through the Energy Performance Gap (EPG) framework adapted from building science. The export shortfall relative to the simulated baseline ranged from 19.0% to 49.3% per harvest (38.1% aggregated over 2010–2015; 12,835 MWh unrealized) and reached 28.9% for the five-mill provincial aggregate. The gap does not arise from idle capacity—availability is 0.98–1.00, and industrial demand matches the simulated value—but from conversion, with a cane-weighted generation deficit of 5.46 kWh/t ($-12.7$%). Plant steam records proved to be accounting allocations based on fixed coefficients and cannot support correlation-based inference; what they document independently is a contiguous start-of-season regime with pressure-reducing valves in service (39 days of a single harvest), during which specific generation was 11.9 kWh/t lower at statistically identical milling rates (26.15 vs. 38.06 kWh/t; $p<0.001$). No interannual trend was detected (Mann–Kendall, $p=0.368$), although statistical power is limited, at $n=7$. A Monte Carlo characterization of the parametric uncertainty of the simulated baseline (boiler efficiency $\pm 3$%, turbine isentropic efficiency $\pm 5$%, and bagasse moisture $\pm 2$ percentage points) shows that the existence of the gap is robust—the probability of no gap is, at most, 1.1%, even under worst-case uniform perturbations—while widening the intensity-level discount interval to [0.57; 0.93]; a start-of-season depression in specific generation recurs in four of the six estimable harvests, of which the 2015 reducer regime is the most severe instance. As case-specific correction tools, operational discount factors of 0.71 (95% block-bootstrap CI [0.68; 0.75]) for export intensity and 0.62 for total seasonal energy are derived; the underlying procedure, rather than the numerical values, is proposed as transferable. Full article

Agricultural drought poses a serious threat to grain production and regional agricultural sustainability. Accurate assessment of agricultural drought disaster risk (ADDR) and identification of its spatiotemporal differentiation are essential prerequisites for implementing precise risk management. Based on natural disaster risk theory, this study developed an exponent-weighted ADDR assessment model from four dimensions: hazard, vulnerability, exposure, and risk caused by insufficient mitigation capability (RIMC). The model was used to assess and zone ADDR in Henan Province from 2011 to 2022, analyze its spatiotemporal characteristics and interannual variability, and examine the interannual consistency of the assessment results using provincial-level statistical records of agricultural drought losses. The results showed that: (1) The ADDR assessment results were generally consistent with the statistical records of agricultural drought losses in terms of interannual variation, and further correlation analyses showed a significant positive association between the two. (2) ADDR and its constituent components exhibited pronounced spatial differentiation across Henan Province. ADDR showed an overall decreasing pattern from the southwest to the northeast, with Nanyang, Luoyang, Xinyang, and Jiaozuo identified as high-risk areas. Hazard showed a similar decreasing trend from the southwest to the northeast; vulnerability generally exhibited a west-high and east-low pattern; exposure showed the opposite pattern, with higher levels in the east and lower levels in the west; and high-RIMC areas were concentrated in western and southwestern Henan. (3) Temporally, both ADDR and hazard exhibited pronounced interannual fluctuations, vulnerability also showed certain interannual variation, exposure varied only slightly among years, and RIMC showed an overall year-by-year declining trend. ADDR showed high interannual variability in Xinyang and Hebi. The findings provide a scientific basis for zoning-based management of agricultural drought risk, precise allocation of drought-mitigation resources, and enhancement of drought resilience in agricultural systems in Henan Province. Full article

Environmental DNA (eDNA) metabarcoding is an efficient, non-invasive approach for surveying fish diversity in complex habitats such as large rivers. This study conducted continuous eDNA monitoring along the Jiangsu section of the Yangtze River mainstem from 2022 to 2024 to characterize spatiotemporal variations in fish community composition and diversity during the fishing ban period. To improve species identification accuracy, a regional 12S rRNA barcode database was constructed, containing 141 fish species and 1204 sequences. Genetic distance analysis revealed a clear barcode gap, with inter-specific and intra-specific distances of 0.232 and 0.007, respectively, and 65.96% of species formed well-supported monophyletic clades in the phylogenetic tree, indicating useful taxonomic resolution for many of the included taxa. Using this regional reference database, eDNA-based monitoring detected 131 fish species over three years, 72.52% of which occurred in all three years. Cypriniformes consistently dominated (54.92–67.16%), showing a relative abundance trend that first increased and then declined, with dominant species changing annually. Alpha diversity analysis showed a significant decline in Chao1 richness from 83.33 to 36.75, while the Shannon index decreased slightly from 2.69 to 2.43. In contrast, Pielou_J evenness increased from 0.62 to 0.68, suggesting a shift toward lower richness but more even abundance distribution. These patterns may reflect the combined influences of multiple environmental and anthropogenic factors during the study period. Spatially, alpha diversity in the Tai–Tong reach was significantly lower than in the Ning–Zhen and Zhen–Tai reaches (p < 0.05), and community composition in 2022 and 2024 was clearly separated from upstream reaches. However, differences among reaches disappeared in 2023, suggesting interannual variation in spatial differentiation, likely associated with flow-driven mixing and transport. Overall, this study reveals multi-year fish community dynamics in the Jiangsu section of the Yangtze River mainstem and demonstrates that a regional barcode database combined with eDNA metabarcoding provides an effective approach for large-river fish monitoring and biodiversity assessment. Full article

Arid-zone agricultural heritage systems (AHSs) face severe challenges from ecological fragility, water scarcity, and socioeconomic pressures; scientifically understanding their system resilience is a critical prerequisite for achieving sustainable development. This study constructs a three-dimensional resilience evaluation indicator system following the Pressure–State–Response (PSR) framework tailored to arid oasis conditions. Drawing on the entropy weight method, GIS spatial analysis, the ARIMA model, and the obstacle degree model, it adopts statistical and remote sensing data of Xinjiang from 2015 to 2024 to systematically analyze the resilience levels, spatiotemporal evolution characteristics, future development trends, and core obstacle factors of six AHSs. The results reveal that the overall resilience of AHSs in Xinjiang exhibited a fluctuating upward trend over the decade, showing an obvious spatial differentiation pattern of “high in Northern Xinjiang, low in Eastern and Southern Xinjiang.” ARIMA forecasting indicates that resilience will maintain a positive growth trajectory from 2025 to 2028, yet inter-site hierarchical gaps persist. The primary constraints hindering resilience improvement include industrial structure upgrading index, per capita regional GDP, annual NDVI, vegetation coverage, and the number of intangible cultural heritage items, with a clear differentiation between long-term structural bottlenecks and temporary short-term constraints. The study concludes that, although the resilience of AHSs in Xinjiang possesses long-term improvement potential, persistent challenges such as fragile ecological foundations, low-end industrial structures, and insufficient cultural inheritance remain prominent. Targeted differentiated strategies—short-term emergency regulation, medium-term industrial–cultural integration, and long-term adaptive governance—are therefore required to enhance systemic resilience in the future. These findings enrich empirical research on AHS resilience in arid regions and provide case references for the scientific conservation, revitalized utilization, and sustainable development of AHSs in Xinjiang and other global dryland areas. Full article

Against the backdrop of China’s Dual Carbon Initiative and national transportation empowerment strategy, accelerating the low-carbon green transition of the transport sector has emerged as an imperative developmental priority. Incorporating carbon emissions as undesirable outputs into the efficiency evaluation framework, this study adopts a multi-method analytical paradigm encompassing the super-efficiency SBM model, Malmquist–Luenberger index, kernel density estimation, Dagum Gini coefficient, geographical detector model, and Geographically and Temporally Weighted Regression (GTWR). Based on panel data covering 30 provincial administrative regions in China from 2004 to 2022, this paper systematically investigates the spatio-temporal evolutionary patterns and intrinsic driving mechanisms of carbon total factor productivity (CTFP) within the transportation industry. The main findings are as follows: (1) The static efficiency results reveal that the national mean CTFP is below unity, indicating overall inefficiency. Nevertheless, it exhibits a fluctuating upward trend after 2009. Regionally, CTFP follows this pattern: Eastern China > Central China > national mean > Northeastern China ≈ Western China. (2) Dynamic productivity analysis shows that the annual average ML index is close to 1, demonstrating an overall upward trend in CTFP, and productivity growth is primarily driven by technological progress. (3) In terms of spatio-temporal patterns, inter-regional disparities constitute the principal source of overall spatial gaps in CTFP, with considerable contribution from transvariation density. (4) Geographical detector analysis suggests that energy intensity (EI) and economic development level are the two factors most strongly correlated with the spatial differentiation of CTFP, and interaction effects exist between them. The results from geographically weighted regression (GWR) further confirm that the strength of the correlation between each driving factor and CTFP presents pronounced regional heterogeneity. Based on these findings, differentiated regional policies for emission reduction and efficiency improvement should be formulated in accordance with the law of diminishing marginal returns. Full article

Developing new quality productive forces (NQPF) is an important direction for accelerating China’s high-quality development and advancing Chinese-style modernization. Based on the connotation and characteristics of NQPF, this study constructs an urban evaluation index system from three aspects of niche width, height, and overlap, and uses panel data of 283 Chinese prefecture-level cities over 2010–2023 to examine the spatiotemporal evolution patterns and key influencing factors of urban NQPF. Results are as follows. Firstly, urban NQPF exhibits an overall upward trajectory with an average annual growth rate of about 4.89%, showing phased features of rapid growth, moderated growth, and slight decline, and a spatial gradient of Eastern leadership, Central catch-up, and relatively low levels in the Western and Northeastern zones, with high-level cities growing into the largest group. Secondly, niche width, height, and overlap all show long-term upward trends. The energy level of factor resources and external resource acquisition capacity grow persistently. Inter-city competition evolves from moderate to high intensity, and regional disparities gradually converge. Thirdly, niche width and height are significantly and positively associated with NQPF development, whereas overlap is significantly and negatively associated, with marked regional heterogeneity. Combinatorial pathway analysis reveals that dominant pathways shift from “LLL + MLM” to “HHH + MMH” types, with HHH dominating high-level cities, MMH prevailing among medium-level ones, and low-level cities shifting from LLL to LLH. Improving energy level of urban new qualitative factor resources, strengthening spatial interaction level of new qualitative factors among cities, and avoiding adverse effects caused by excessive competition among cities should become an important content of optimizing the spatial layout of NQPF factor resources in China. Full article

Modulated by diverse climatic and oceanic forcing factors, the sea ice durations in the nearshore waters of the Bohai and northern Yellow Seas exhibit complex fluctuations on interannual and interdecadal timescales. Systematically analyzing the oscillatory patterns and trend stationarity of long-term sea ice duration series provides robust theoretical and practical guidance for coastal ice disaster early warning, marine industrial safety, and coastal economic sustainability. This study analyzes annual sea ice duration series recorded over 59 winters (1966–2024) at six representative coastal marine stations spanning the full spatial gradient of regional ice regimes across the Bohai and northern Yellow Seas. Isolated missing values were filled by linear interpolation, and the Ljung–Box Q test confirmed that the residual series do not follow a white-noise process. Two categories of stationarity tests—conventional unit root tests and Fourier series expansion-augmented stationarity tests—are adopted to quantify the stationary properties, nonlinear trend transitions, and smooth structural breaks of sea ice durations at each station. The results reveal marked spatial differences in interannual volatility and evolutionary trends among stations: two smooth transitional shifts are identified for Bayuquan (BYQ) and Qinhuangdao (QHD), whereas the remaining stations each exhibit a single shift. Long-term trends range from multistage declining patterns to a rising pattern for Donggang (DGG), while Zhimaowan (ZMW) shows a statistically insignificant trend. This work provides quantitative statistical evidence for sea ice risk evaluation and coastal structural safety protection across the Bohai and northern Yellow Seas, and offers actionable decision-making references for climate change adaptation and integrated coastal zone governance in ice-affected coastal zones worldwide. Full article

Mycotoxin contamination in food and feed remains a major public health concern because of its potential toxicological impact and its global economic implications. Aflatoxins and ochratoxin A are of particular concern due to their carcinogenic, hepatotoxic, and nephrotoxic effects, highlighting the need for effective surveillance systems to reduce dietary exposure in the population. This study analyzes 2479 mycotoxin-related notifications concerning both food and feed reported through the iRASFF system during the period 2020–2024, with the aim of characterizing temporal notification trends, identifying the most affected food products and geographical regions, and evaluating the evolution of control strategies implemented by competent authorities. The results did not show a statistically significant long-term increasing trend in the number of mycotoxin notifications, although interannual fluctuations may reflect both changes in contamination patterns and improvements in detection and reporting systems. Products originating outside the European Union accounted for 90.44% of notifications and showed a significantly higher mean number of notifications than products originating within the European Union. Turkey (24%) and the United States (14%) were the most frequently reported countries of origin at a global level. Aflatoxins were the most frequently detected mycotoxins in food (84%), followed by ochratoxin A (15%), mainly affecting nuts, cereals, fruits, vegetables and herbs and spices. These findings demonstrate that mycotoxins continue to represent a persistent challenge for European food safety. Strengthening surveillance systems, enhancing international cooperation, and adapting control strategies to emerging environmental and trade-related factors are essential to minimize consumer exposure, particularly to compounds with genotoxic and carcinogenic potential, and to improve risk management within the food supply chain. Full article

Dissolved organic carbon (DOC) is a climate-sensitive component of carbon cycling in inland waters, but consistent regional comparisons of its seasonal and interannual patterns remain limited across China. Here, we conducted a secondary analysis of a published monthly DOC dataset for 60 selected lake and reservoir series (15 per climate region) spanning China’s subtropical monsoon, temperate monsoon, temperate continental, and plateau mountainous regions during 2000–2023. The source dataset was generated using random forest models constrained by 1326 DOC observations from 83 lake and reservoir stations, and with watershed-scale climate, soil, and anthropogenic variables used as predictors. Across the four regions, the long-term mean DOC concentrations were 9.78, 14.10, 16.12, and 15.14 mg L⁻¹, respectively. Seasonal medians showed spring–summer enrichment in the two monsoon regions, nearly equal spring and summer values in the temperate continental region, and an autumn maximum in the plateau mountainous region. Interannual variability was greatest in the subtropical monsoon region (CV = 3.18%), whereas the plateau mountainous region had the lowest variability (CV = 0.95%). Mann–Kendall analysis identified a significant decline only in the temperate continental region (Z = −2.51, p = 0.012). These results provide a climate–region synthesis of model-derived DOC patterns in Chinese inland waters. Because climate variables contributed to the original random forest predictions, the present study interprets regional contrasts descriptively rather than as independent causal evidence of climatic controls. Full article

Estimates of gross primary production (GPP) derived from satellite remote sensing are crucial for assessing the terrestrial carbon dynamics. While model comparison is important, existing GPP products rely on a limited number of satellite sensors. In this study, the contemporary fraction of absorbed photosynthetically active radiation product derived from PROBA-V and Sentinel-3 was used to develop a new GPP product (EU-GPP) based on a light use efficiency (LUE) model for the European continent. EU-GPP accounted for the distinct responses of biomes to temperature and water stresses by incorporating biome-specific environmental scalars. Evaluation against eddy covariance GPP and model comparison against other LUE-based GPP products demonstrated the high model accuracy of EU-GPP within Europe. The model also responded well to the drought-induced stress, indicating its ability to capture interannual variability and the impact of extreme weather events. EU-GPP highlighted increasing GPP trends in croplands during 2014–2023, underlining the recent advancements in agricultural management practices. The Mediterranean forest ecosystems exhibited weakening GPP, suggesting the strong adverse impact of summer droughts on these ecosystems. This study presents an LUE-based GPP product based on novel remote sensing data and provides an independent perspective for the monitoring of GPP across the European continent. Full article

Occupational radiation exposure in nuclear medicine (NM) is heterogeneous because personnel handle unsealed radionuclides and work near injected patients. This five-year retrospective study characterised whole-body Hp(10), whole-body Hp(0.07), ring Hp(0.07), and estimated eye-lens Hp(3) in six NM staff over 20 quarterly monitoring cycles (2020–2024). TLD-100 whole-body and ring dosimeters were analysed, and Hp(3) was estimated from collar-level Hp(0.07), with two alternative surrogates examined in sensitivity analyses. Temporal trends were assessed using mixed-effects models supported by worker-cluster bootstrap, log-transformed, Winsorised, and Benjamini–Hochberg-adjusted analyses. A total of 120 quarterly measurements per quantity were available. Mean annual doses were 1.3 ± 0.44 mSv for Hp(10), 1.4 ± 0.37 mSv for Hp(0.07), 1.4 ± 0.37 mSv for estimated Hp(3), and 4.3 ± 3.8 mSv for ring Hp(0.07). All doses remained well below ICRP limits. Ring dose showed a robust downward trend across sensitivity analyses, whereas the Hp(10) decline was directionally suggestive but statistically fragile under small-cluster inference; Hp(0.07) remained stationary. The low ring-to-Hp(10) ratio and low estimated Hp(3) values support continued ALARA optimisation, while the observed inter-individual variability identifies extremity handling as a priority for future monitoring. Full article

Cropland abandonment is a critical challenge for food security and the sustainable use of land resources, especially in the hilly and mountainous regions of southern China. To characterize the spatiotemporal evolution and associated-factor patterns of cropland abandonment in these regions, this study uses Ji’an City, Jiangxi Province, as a case study and develops an integrated framework for abandonment identification and monitoring, predictive-association analysis, relative risk assessment, and zoning management. Using Landsat remote sensing imagery from 1990 to 2024, crop phenological features, and multisource topographic, soil, climatic, ecological, and socioeconomic data, we identified and evaluated long-term cropland abandonment. The results show that, after incorporating phenological features and temporal filtering, annual land-use classification evaluated with spatially separated testing samples achieved a mean overall accuracy of 95.27% and a mean Kappa coefficient of 0.931, and the overall accuracy of cropland abandonment identification reached 91.58%, with a Kappa coefficient of 0.83. Cropland abandonment in Ji’an City showed an overall accelerating trend, with the abandonment rate exceeding 15% during 2020–2021. Spatially, abandonment was more intensive in the west than in the east and more severe in mountainous areas than in plains. Paddy field abandonment was the dominant form of cropland abandonment across the city, whereas dryland abandonment was more limited in extent but showed stronger interannual fluctuations. The predictive-association analysis indicated that tree cover consistently showed high predictive importance for both paddy fields and drylands. Paddy field predictions were more strongly associated with topographic position, surface roughness, and soil conservation, whereas dryland predictions showed stronger associations with aridity and population density. From 1993 to 2023, the model-estimated relative abandonment risk increased, and high-risk areas expanded from deep mountainous regions to low-hill areas. By coupling relative risk levels with associated-factor patterns, we divided paddy fields and drylands into four management zones: core protection zones, dynamic warning zones, integrated improvement zones, and ecological fallow zones. Differentiated management strategies were then proposed for each zone. This study provides methodological support and decision-making evidence for cropland abandonment monitoring, cropland protection, and differentiated land management in the hilly and mountainous regions of southern China. Full article