The design and development of arable-land change information system

Arable land protection has been a global hotspot, because how can we exploit arable-land resources is an important topic for the regional future socio-economic stability and sustainable development in China. Managing and monitoring the change of arable-land on quantity and quality can provide the background and foundation information. The paper starts with the introduction of the necessity to monitor the data of arable land change and set up a system to manage the year on year changes of arable land. Then the authors present the design of the main functions of the system and discuss the system´s structure and framework. On the basis of these, databases, including spatial database and attribute database are designed and appropriately organized. At last, the China arable-land change information system (CALCIS) is developed based on geographical information system and remote sensing techniques and then a good example of it is given to show the successful application of the system.