Research On Land Use Change And Its Driving Force In Farming-pasturing Ecotone

Ejinhollo County, which lies in the agro-pastoral transition area, is chosen as a studyregion. Land use change and its regional difference are analyzed generally in the study regionduring 1984 to 2000 year, and its driving force is discussed farther in this dissertation. Theimportant evolvement is to identify farther the effect of natural environmental factors on landuse change. To study the driving force will be of significance for environmental improvementand sustainable development of society and economy. After preliminary analysis, results weregot as following:(1)Land use change and regional difference: The characters of land use change were thatthe land used for construction and high forest lands increased quickly while the shifting duneand grasslands decreased from 1984 to 1991 and the shifting dune and grasslands increasedgreatly while forestlands decreased largely from 1991 to 2000. If 50% of LUCC type can bemaintained stable in spatiality in the different time stages, it is Considered that the LUCC typehas a high stability. From this viewpoint, the results show that the stability of grasslands andwater field is the highest, then that of farmlands, and that of other land use types were unstable.The change of woodland, water field and the land used for construction focused on Mu UsSandland subregion; the change of farmland focused on loess hill subregion; the change of theshifting dune focused on Mu Us Sandland subregion and Wushen Lowland subregion. Thechange of grassland focused on loess hill subregion from 1984 to 1991 year and on Mu UsSandland subregion from 1991 to 2000 year. Spatial displacements of grasslands and waterfield were less, and that of other LUCC types was remarkable.(2) The relationship between natural environmental factors and land use change:Ⅰ. The more warm and dry direction of climate will result in intensifying farther conflictof water's supply and demand. Therefore, the drought will be enhanced and urge land usechange. In the study region, it is more preferential to develop stockbreeding than agriculture.Ⅱ. The landform analysis prove that along with gradient bigger, the conversion amongdifferent land use types will be more frequent, and the effect on sunny exposure is more intensethan downsun exposure.Ⅲ. The effect of desertification on land use change will be more intense along with thedesertification more severe. In different subregions, the areas of severe desertification are themost active regions of land use change. Ⅳ. Generally, the active regions of land use change focus on shifting sandy soil andsemi-fixed sandy soil. It shows that land use change is easy to occur on the soil types whosestructure stability and fertility are inferior.Ⅴ. The vegetation analysis show that land use change is easy to occur on the vegetationtypes whose structure stability is inferior.Ⅵ. Generally, the situation of soil nutrient is infertile in Ejinhollo County. In threesubregions, the order on the situation of soil nutrient is Wushen Lowland subregion＞Mu UsSandland subregion＞Loess Hill subregion. At a certain extent, the distributing pattern offarmland is dependent on the situation of soil nutrient.Ⅶ. The rationality estimates of land use structure show that except farmland on Loess Hillsubregion and high forest land on Wushen Lowland subregion, the rationality indices of othersdeclined, which prove that in general, and land use structure hasn't improve and has anirrational trend.(3)The human factors of land use change: On short-term temporal scale, human activitiesare the most important driving factors of land use change, which represent on population,policy, and economical benefit, development of resource and drove structure.(4) Vegetation coverage presents wavy change trend between recent different years in theregion. There are mostly three factors which affect vegetation coverage: the effect ofdesertification combating, optimizing of economic structure and climate factor.