Ecological Impacts of Land Use Change in the Arid Tarim River Basin of China

Abstract

Land use/cover change has become an indispensable part of global eco-environmental change research. The Tarim River Basin is the largest inland river basin in China. It is also one of the most ecologically fragile areas in the country, with greening and desertification processes coexisting. This paper analyzes the evolution of land-use/cover change in the Tarim River Basin over the past 30 years based on remote sensing data. The research also explores the contribution of conversion between different land types to the ecological environment by selecting methods, such as transfer matrix and ecological contribution rate. Results indicate that grassland and barren land are the main land types in the region, accounting for 72.46% and 18.87% of the basin area, respectively. From 1990 to 2019, cropland area increased from 33,585.89 km2 to 52,436.40 km2, an increase of 56.13%, while barren land areas decreased from 781,380.57 km2 to 760,783.29 km2. Most of the land-use conversion was grassland to other land types and other land types to barren land. Since 1990, the conversion of barren land to grassland and cropland in the basin has led to ecological improvement, whereas the conversion of grassland to cropland has caused deterioration, but with a generally improving trend. It is anticipated that, over the next decade, changes in land types will involve increases in grassland and woodland area, decreases in barren land and cropland, and an overall improvement in the ecological environment in the watershed. Since agriculture and animal husbandry are the main industries in the Tarim River Basin and the land-use structure is dominated by cropland and grassland, several key measures should be implemented. These include improving land use, rationalizing the use of water and soil resources, slowing down the expansion of cropland, and alleviating the contradiction between humans and land, with the ultimate aim of achieving sustainable development of the social economy and ecological environment.

Land-use function evolution and eco-environmental effects in the tarim river basin from the perspective of production–living–ecological space

“…Additionally, it separates the dynamics of the main land-use types, in order to explore changes in the regional ecological environment. A positive value means that the transformation improves the regional ecological environment quality, while a negative value indicates that the transformation reduces the quality (Hou et al, 2022;Li and Wu, 2022). It is calculated as follows:…”

Evolution of ecological patterns of land use changes in European metropolitan areas

“…They divided the land into 6 categories according to the land occupation, and gave each category of land corresponding weights, and used the area to evaluate the final quality index. In 2022, Yifeng Hou et al optimized the weight parameters to evaluate the Tarim River Basin [15]. This illustrates a very important issue: the rationality of land use weights is clearly inadequate.…”

“…drivers of change. In 2022, Yifeng Hou et al [15] explored the contribution of the conversion between different land types to the ecological environment by analyzing the evolution of land use/cover change in the Tarim River Basin over the past 30 years. The analysis shows that the overall ecological environment of the basin shows a trend of improvement.…”

Impact of COVID-19 Lockdown on Vegetation Indices and Heat Island Effect: A Remote Sensing Study of Dhaka City, Bangladesh

“…Typically, the UHI effect is calculated by comparing the temperature readings in an urban location to those of the surrounding area [62,63]. Urban heat island effect's influence on urban environment and ecological change has been a popular topic.…”