Examining the relationship between urban expansion and farmland protection under population decline: a multi-scale analytical framework
Highlights:
- Developed a multi-scale analytic framework on urban-farmland dynamics.
- Explored how urban-farmland dynamics shift with population decline.
- Reveals that population change drives farmland loss via built-up expansion, with a 5-year lag.
- Showed that urban-agricultural interfacial zones are the most sensitive.
- Agricultural promotion areas protect farmland but do little to curb fragmentation.

