Abstract
Although rapid land-use change has taken place in many arid and semi-arid regions of northwestern China, relatively less attention has been paid to studying the characteristics of land use change, as well as the ecological responses of land use change in these regions, especially in fragile agro-pastoral regions. This paper analyzes the land use change and its ecological responses during 1985–2005 based on the landscape metrics change and transition matrix of land use types by the combined use of satellite remote sensing and geographical information systems in Shandan County, a typical agro-pastoral region in the middle and upper reaches of Heihe River, northwest China. The results indicate significant changes in land use have occurred and the landscape has become more continuous, clumped and more homogeneous within the examined area. Land use change was mainly characterized by remarkable expansion of barred land and water area, slight increase of cropland and urbanized land, and evident shrinkage of grassland and woodland. The study also demonstrates that the land cover suffered severe degeneration and the ecological environment tended to deteriorate over the study period, mainly as follows: grassland degradation, land desertification and ecosystem services decline.
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Acknowledgments
This work was supported by the Chinese Academy of Sciences Action Plan for West Development Project “Watershed Airborne Telemetry Experimental Research (WATER)” (grant no. KZCX2-XB2-09), the National High Technology Research and Development Program of China (grant no. 863 Program-2002AA133062), and the National Natural Science Foundation of China (grant no. 40671040). Special thanks are extended to editors and anonymous reviewers for their valuable comments.
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Du, Z., Shen, Y., Wang, J. et al. Land-use change and its ecological responses: a pilot study of typical agro-pastoral region in the Heihe River, northwest China. Environ Geol 58, 1549–1556 (2009). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00254-008-1656-7
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s00254-008-1656-7