Does cultivated land fragmentation aggravate carbon emissions? Evidence from Yellow River Basin in China

In China, the rapid population growth and urban expansion have led to a continuous reduction in cultivated land and increasing cultivated land fragmentation. With the increasing fragmentation of cultivated land, carbon emissions continue to rise and the greenhouse effect becomes more severe. Despite the Yellow River Basin’s relatively fertile soil resources, the impact of cultivated land fragmentation on agricultural carbon emissions remains unclear due to the accelerated social and economic development and the transformation of cultivated land use. This study focuses on the lower reaches of the Yellow River Basin, constructs a data analysis-multistage-mechanism interpretation and analysis framework, quantifies the degree of cultivated land fragmentation, evaluates its relationship with carbon emission intensity, and discusses the dynamic changes of cultivated land fragmentation in time and space and its impact on carbon emissions at different spatial scales. The findings indicate: (1) The cultivated land fragmentation in the lower reaches of the Yellow River Basin is highly heterogeneous across different scales, with a lower degree of fragmentation as the scale increases; (2) The increase of carbon emissions in the Yellow River Basin is significantly related to the increase of carbon emissions, and the emission intensity in the fragmented high areas is high, while the positive correlation is more obvious in small-scale areas;(3) A synergistic governance model of sustainable agriculture and climate mitigation to reduce carbon emissions.