Driving Forces Analysis Of Ecological Degradation In Arghan Of The Lower Reaches Of Tarim River

Tarim River is the longest inland River of China, located in the arid of Northwest China. Since the 50's of 20th century, water to the lower reaches of Tarim River course become less and less; groundwater levels drop significantly; a large number of natural vegetation decay and death; the desertification expand and ecosystem degradation, which is due to environmental changes in climatic conditions and human beings use and development water resource unreasonably, especially the latter. So the Tarim River Basin becomes one of the most serious ecological environment degenerates areas in Xinjiang, even in our country. And its ecology worsening question has also become one of hot spot areas about Chinese ecological environment problem, has caused the community and government's attention. In order to save the"the Green Corridor"in the lower reaches of Tarim river, China government includes the comprehensive management of Tarim River Basin in the "Tenth Five-Year Plan"; the Xinjiang people's government carries out the emergency ecological water transport project many times and the World Bank also give the large amount loan to hold the Tarim River Basin's ecological protection. Speaking of the whole basin, degradation of "the Green Corridor" is most serious. So deeply research the degenerated ecosystem of Tarim River down stream area and seek many measures to restore the degenerated environment are the current primary missions. But reveal the root causes, driving forces and the degenerated mechanism correctly are the prerequisites for ecological reconstruction, as well as provide theoretical guidance for the Tarim River Basin's sustainable development and ecological environment construction in the future.This paper chooses Arghan as the study area, based the actual situation and abundant works about the lower reaches of Tarim River, and analyzed its degeneration condition and degradation mechanism by field investigation and data analysis. Analyze the driving forces of ecological degradation in the study area use qualitative method and quantitative method, and choose the surface runoff change of Qiala hydrologic station as the analysis object. In this paper, we select a number of socio-economy factors and analysis them with Principal Component Analysis by SPSS software package. Through the above analysis,obtained every driving force's influences and contribution rates to ecological degeneration in study area. In addition, according to the analysis process and the results, we made some ecological restoration and reconstruction measures to the lower reaches of Tarim River. This study has received some preliminary achievement and conclusion, as following:(1) Ecological vulnerability and instability of ecosystem in the lower reaches of Tarim River is internal interference of system degradation, and external interference is external driving force. They effect on the ecological degradation together.(2)Climate Change is not the main reason which caused water flow reduction in the lower reaches of Tarim River, but external interference is the most fundamental reason. Especially, the socio-economy activities of human which caused water flow reduction in the lower reaches of Tarim River is the reason of ecological deterioration.(3) Analyze socio-economy factors which caused water flow reduction in the study area by Principal Component Analysis. The result showed that these impact facts are divided into two categories. The first is agricultural economy activity of human, that is, population fact, agricultural activities and economic activity factor which has close relationship with oasis development scale; the second are the level of technology and people's living standards, that is, regional economy, scientific and technological development levels which belong to social factor. Calculate their contribution rates to water flow reduction in the study area, it showed that contribution rate of the first category (anthropogenic factor) is 85.3%, and the second category (social factor) is 14.7%. Then we can see that the main driving force which caused ecological degradation to study area is anthropogenic factor.(4) Some ecological restoration and reconstruction measures to the lower reaches of Tarim River: using of water resources; adjusting plantation structure and implementing water-saving agriculture measures; closing natural vegetation areas to alleviate pressure of livestock grazing in some areas; controlling population quantity, enlarging propaganda and enhancing environmental awareness of each minority.