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Cropland protection strategies have provided a strong contribution to limit cropland transformation worldwide. However, it negatively affects ecological land (e.g., forest, grassland, and wetland). Identifying a win-win approach for cropland protection and ecological conservation is important. Land use optimization plays a vital role in solving conflicts among land uses. Thus, in this research, taking China (mainland) as the study area, we optimized the spatial distribution of urban land and cropland to balance the requirement of cropland protection strategies and their negative effects on ecological land according to the spatial heterogeneity of land agricultural production capacity by using the LAND System Cellular Automata model for Potential Effects (LANDSCAPE). Specifically, we developed three optimization scenarios from compensational, occupancy, and occupancy and compensational sectors. We also …