Cultivated Land Suitability Prediction in Southern Xinjiang Typical Areas Based on Optimized MaxEnt Model

To ensure food security in Xinjiang, scientifically conducting land suitability evaluation is of significant importance. This paper takes an arid and ecologically fragile region of southern Xinjiang—Qiemu County—as an example. Based on the optimized Maximum Entropy (MaxEnt) model, 14 multi-source environmental variables including climate, soil, hydrology, and topography are integrated. The ENMeval package is used to optimize the model parameters, and Spearman’s rank correlation analysis is employed to screen key variables. The spatial distribution of land suitability and the dominant factors are systematically assessed. The results show that the model AUC values for the mountainous and plain areas are 0.987 and 0.940, respectively, indicating high accuracy. In the plain area, land suitability is primarily influenced by the soil sand content, while in the mountainous region, the annual accumulated temperature plays a leading role. The highly suitable areas are mainly distributed in the northern plains and parts of the southern mountains. This study clarifies the suitable areas for land development and environmental thresholds, providing a scientific basis for the development of land resources in arid regions and the implementation of the “store grain in the land” strategy.