Security Assessment And Scenario Prediction Of Human Settlements In Desertification Area

Desertification seriously threatens the ecological security and socio-economic sustainable development. In desertification areas, assessment and classification of human settlement security is an important theoretical basis in desertification control, it has great significance for guiding desertification combating. In this paper, we treated resources, environment and socio-economic as a coupled system, referencing human settlements theory, ecological safety theory and ecological footprint theory, selected Yanchi County in Ningxia Province for the study, quantitative evaluate the desertification human settlements safety.The results indicate that the county's present ecological footprint is 3.68hm2 per capital and the biological capacity is 1.74hm2 per capital. In the past 10 years, due to the rapid economic growth and the acceleration of urbanization process, there is an obvious increase on ecological footprint. However harsh natural environment and inappropriate resources development approach lead to ecological deficit increased year by year, local economic development depended on the input of external resources. Because of the promoting potential of ecological capacity, through effective adjustment measures, ecological demand and supply can be restored to the balance and socio-economic and ecological environment can be developed sustainability.Based on security assessment of human settlements, simulatored human settlements security changes in different socio-economic development conditions. The results show that under the rapid economic growth, resident relying on high technology to improve biological productivity and reduce dependence on ecological resources through changed ways of life, ultimately achieve sustainable development of human settlements in desertification area.