Research On Ecological Risk Assessment Of Northen Yanchi County, Ningxia Hui Autonomous Region

Desertification is one of the most important environment problem caused by the development of modern society. China is affected by desertification seriously, especially in northern ecotone where land for farming is adjacent to grass land for producing livestock. Therefore, it is significant to prevent and control aeolian sand disaster considering sustainable development and social security in China.As one of the popular topics of environmental science, regional ecological risk assessment, which mainly focuses on the possibilities and levels of harm to ecosystem and its components that are caused by pollution, artificial damage, and natural disasters, applied to various kinds of environmental problems by researchers in many fields.Taking sandy desertification areas of northern Yanchi as research areas, and taking local land use data and socio-economic statistics between the year 1995 and 2007 as main data source, based on theoretical framework of regional ecological risk assessment, methods of landscape pattern analysis and spatial analysis approaches of Geostatistics, we demonstrated the application of the method ERA to the research areas. To find the connection among ecological risk, local economy, and environment, considering the local economy and topographic factors, we analysized the results of this research. The consequences indicated that owing to the effective work of ecological construction, adjustment of land use structure, and urbanization, the regional ecological risk level in research areas had declined dramatically during the year 1995 to 2007. It also pointed out that desertification, which was caused by intensive artificial disturbance, for example, highway operation and improper cultivation are the primary factors that regional high-risk came from, especially in middle and high altitude areas. To reduce the level of regional ecological risk, effective measures, such as making practical rules, reasonable vegetation construction, structural readjustment of rural industry properly, utilizing the natural resources intensively, and developing urbanization purposively are the keys to reduce the regional ecological risk.Based on traditional ecological assessment framework, this paper analysized the responses of ecological risk to local economy, topography, and environment, which made this research innovative more in related research areas.