ABSTRACT

In recent years, most rural areas in China have faced the prominent livelihood transformation of smallholder farmers. It may directly or indirectly affect the regional environment. Thus, this paper constructed a conceptual framework and chose the first Globally Important Agricultural Heritage Systems (GIAHS) site in the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau as the case for evaluating the impact of smallholder farmers’ livelihood transformation on the agricultural system. From 2016 to 2019, the main direction of livelihood transformation of smallholder farmers in the case area is the non-agricultural livelihood transformation. And the average proportion of agricultural income in households has continued to decline. With the non-agricultural livelihood transformation, smallholder farmers’ land use and energy use behaviour has changed. As a result, the elements in farmland and the relationship between farmland, woodland, and grassland have shown weakening trends in the structure of the case agricultural system. In addition, the ecological and sociocultural functions of the case agricultural system have declined. Still, the productive function has remained almost at a stable level and has even increased slightly.