Spatiotemporal differentiation patterns and driving factors of facility agricultural land in Anhui Province

Facility agricultural land has become an increasingly important land resource for advancing the rural revitalization strategy. Its rapid expansion has made it a focal and challenging issue in land-use and land-management research. Based on panel data from 75 county-level units in Anhui Province, this study employs dynamic degree analysis, gravity-center migration models, and spatial autocorrelation techniques to examine the spatiotemporal evolution patterns of facility agricultural land and its driving factors. The results indicate that: 1) Facility agricultural land demonstrates a pronounced upward trend, with the central region experiencing earlier and faster growth that subsequently facilitates coordinated expansion across the northern and southern regions; 2) From 2005 to 2023, facility agricultural land gradually developed an inverted “U-shaped” distribution along both the east-west and north-south axes. Its gravity center shifted northwestward, accompanied by substantial longitudinal and latitudinal variations, and the standard deviational ellipse exhibited marked changes coupled with a northward displacement; 3) Since 2010, facility agricultural land has shown a significant and positive spatial agglomeration pattern. High-high clusters have increasingly concentrated in the Northern Anhui Plain, whereas low-low clusters have converged in the mountainous and hilly areas of southern Anhui; 4) The spatiotemporal evolution of facility agricultural land is jointly shaped by multiple factors, including annual precipitation, mean elevation, primary industry output per unit area, material inputs in facility agriculture, rural residents’ per capita disposable income, and government expenditure on science and technology. To enhance the utilization and governance of facility agricultural land in Anhui Province, this study proposes the following policy recommendations: Prioritize the improvement of agricultural mechanization to promote the high-efficiency development of facility agriculture; Optimize regional industrial structures by leveraging local resource endowments; Capitalize on locational advantages to strengthen technological empowerment in modern agriculture.