Abstract:
Conservation tillage plays a vital role in enhancing the quality of dryland in Northeast China’s black soil region and protecting the ecological environment. However, limited research has been conducted on establishing suitability evaluation indicators for dryland conservation tillage at the regional scale, performing scientific assessments, and identifying priority implementation areas. Shenyang is located in the southern hinterland of Northeast China’s black soil region, where dryland farming accounts for 77% of the total cultivated land. As a key commercial grain production base in Liaoning Province, determining suitable areas and priority sequences for conservation tillage in its dryland is crucial for protecting arable land in this region, and also provides essential guidance for the implementation of conservation tillage technologies. Taking Shenyang’s dryland fields as the research object, this study employs the Analytic Hierarchy Process (AHP) and Delphi method to construct a suitability evaluation index system for dryland conservation tillage, which includes nine indicators: effective accumulated temperature, annual precipitation, average wind speed, topographic location, slope gradient, field block regularity, soil texture, effective soil layer thickness, and soil organic matter content. GIS technology was used to conduct suitability assessments and spatial analysis of dryland conservation tillage. By calculating the constraint degree for each indicator, the primary driving factors were identified. The suitability of conservation tillage for dryland farming in Shenyang shows a distribution pattern of "high in the west, low in the east" and "high in the south, low in the north". Specifically, the highly suitable, relatively suitable, moderately suitable, and unsuitable areas account for 28.24%, 27.36%, 31.24%, and 13.16% of the dryland area, respectively. Regarding subsystem constraints, climatic conditions contribute 45% to the constraints, topography and landforms account for 33%, and soil properties represent 22%. Key driving factors include annual precipitation, effective accumulated temperature, slope gradient, and effective soil layer thickness. Interaction analysis via geographical detector indicates that the enhancing interaction among precipitation, topography, and wind speed constitutes the key combination influencing suitability—for example, the interaction explanatory power q-value between annual precipitation and topographic location reaches
0.7394,, as topography modulates rainfall redistribution. Overall, climatic factors are the primary determinant of the spatial distribution of dryland conservation tillage suitability. Western and southern Shenyang exhibits high suitability for conservation tillage, making these areas priority zones for practical implementation. Conversely, eastern and northern regions show lower suitability, requiring the exploration of more appropriate technical models to balance productivity and soil protection, thereby achieving comprehensive conservation and quality improvement of dryland fields across the entire study area.