Revealing geo-spatial disparity responses of cropland area dynamics to regional population size and economic development in China

• Remote sensing methods had potentials for investigating CA-PS-ED nexus. • Box-Cox transformation largely reduced data skewness. • CA dynamics displayed geo-spatial disparity responses to PS and ED. • ED contributed more to regional coupling coordination degree increases. • Regional development sustainability needs to balance CA-PS-ED nexus. Increasingly geo-spatial mismatches among croplands, population and economy were perceived as greatly affecting regional sustainable development. However, their quantification interrelationships were not clearly clarified. To bridge this gap, validated satellite-derived proxy data and correlation analyses & coupling coordination degree (CCD) analyses were employed to investigate spatial responses of cropland area (CA) dynamics to regional population size (PS) and economic development (ED) at agricultural region and county scales in 2000–2022. Results found, (1) most counties of traditional agricultural regions usually displayed cropland density decrease. In contrast, CA increase mainly focused on low-density cropland counties. PS and ED changes were greatly responsible for the phenomena. (2) Responses of CA dynamics to PS and ED performed various geospatial scale effects. CA dynamics directly and negatively affected by PS ( p < 0.05) and indirectly by ED in most agricultural regions. Unusually, the positive correlation between CA and PS was also observed in Northwestern China (r = 0.838, p < 0.01). At the county scale, significantly negative responses of CA to ED were more observed in Mid-eastern counties. (3) National CCD values among CA, PS and ED increased from 0.63 ± 0.18 to 0.69 ± 0.17. Disorder developments counties (i.e., CCD < 0.5) decreased from 337 to 242. ED played crucial roles in prompting national and county coordination development levels, but corresponding CA also made sacrifice. This study highlights that regional coordination developments should pay more attention to the CA-PS-ED nexus tradeoffs in the future.