Driving Factors and Prediction of Rock Desertification of Non-Tillage Lands in a Karst Basin, Southwest China

Abstract

Rocky desertification is seriously restricting the sustainable development of agricultural production and tourism industry in karst regions. This study focus on the characteristics of rocky desertification and its main driving factors on non-tillage lands in Houzhai River Basin of southwestern China. Artificial neural networks (ANNs) were employed in this study to identify the importance of different environmental factors on rocky desertification. The results showed that the rock outcrops in non-tillage lands ranged from 0.00 to 91.12% with a mean value of 19.10% in the Houzhai River Basin, and the rates of rock outcrops among different types of vegetation were ordered as: shrub grasslands (35.30%)>arbor forestlands (30.07%)>shrublands (23.13%)>arbour-shrub mixed forestlands (27.54%). With increases in slope gradient and altitude, the cover rate of rock outcrops became higher and rocky desertification became more serious. Based on ANNs analysis, the correlation coefficients between observed and predicted values of remaining data sets ranged from 0.828 to 0.998, which indicated that the importance of altitude, slope gradient, gravel content and soil bulk density are the dominant factors affecting soil erosion and thereby leading to the occurrence of rocky desertification in the Houzhai River Basin. In addition, ANNs combine with environmental factors can be a feasible way to predict tendency of rocky desertification in a karst regions.

Effects of Conservation Tillage on Soil Properties and Maize Yield in Karst Regions, Southwest China

“…Therefore, more attention is required from both the government and the public [2,3]. In southwestern China, karst rocky desertification was caused by irrational land use on the fragile, thin karst soil in the karst mountains [4,5], and, most importantly, intensive artificial activities.…”

Machine learning algorithm for estimating karst rocky desertification in a peak-cluster depression basin in southwest Guangxi, China

“…Its ecological and environmental problems have been successively identified 3 , including an extremely fragile ecological environment, loss of biodiversity 4 , and ecosystem degradation 5 , 6 . The ecological environmental security problems caused by karst rocky desertification have seriously affected people's living environment and sustainable development 7 , and thus, KRD has drawn intensive interest in the field of global environmental change 8 .…”

“…However, the factors influencing karst rocky desertification are complex and diverse. In support of this, Huang et al 8 utilized artificial neural networks (ANNs) to identify the importance of different environmental factors to karst rocky desertification. Zhang et al 28 used correlation analysis to study the relationships between karst rocky desertification, temperature, and rainfall and pointed out that karst rocky desertification is not sensitive to responses to climate change and there is a certain lag.…”