Land Use And Landscape Change Of Barkol County On The Northern Slope Of Tianshan Mountains

The variety of land uses necessarily promotes the seriate reaction of landscape pattern. The analysis on the landscape patterns in the area of different phases can show clearly the character of landscape pattern and related ecology course, both is a policy that resolve thoroughly the inherent mechanism of landscape structure change. National policies and various ecological engineeringes all increase the variety of land utilization pattern, so the study on the variable character of landscape pattern is a important acpect of evaluating national policies and the achievement of ecological engineeringes and one of researchful hot topics of landsape pattern. At present,the study on landscape pattern focus on dynamic changes of landscape pattern in the course of urbanization, dynamic changes of agriculture landscape pattern, dynamic changes of forest landscape pattern, dynamic changes of marsh andscape pattern and so on. The northwest area in china is on the background of desert mechanism, whose area is11.4%of Chinese area. In recent years, many policies of returning pasture to grassland, returning cropland to forestry and grassland, urbanization construction and so on were put in practice, but at present the study on landscape pattern on the background of desert mechanism is less. In the study, the28years change process of landscape pattern in Xinjiang Barkol County was studies, basing on different phases remote sensing data and using geographic information system GIS. The results as follows:1. Although the number of landscape types in Barkol County has changed during the past28years, there was no significant difference in the main landscape patterns of grassland and unused land. The area of both waters and unused land decreased, whilst grassland, cultivated land, residential area, industrial land and woodland area increased. The basic configuration of the landscape spatial pattern remains mainly as large plaques, showing a gathered mosaic distribution.2. The degree of landscape diversity and fragmentation in Barkol County gradually reduced while landscape heterogeneity increased. Between1980and2008. the number of patches of farmland, residential and industrial land increased, while the number of patches of grassland, unused land, woodland and water types significantly decreased. The total number of landscape patches was gradually reduced in Barkol County in addition to patch density and patch edge density, whereas the average patch area increased. The largest patch area and connectivity were reduced and the degree of landscape heterogeneity increased.3. The fractal dimension of landscape increased in Barkol County, but the stability of landscape did not. The changes of patches show that fractal dimension of the landscape increased, while the stability index decreased. The relative stability of various landscape types is:residents and industrial land> water> cultivated land> forest land> grassland and unused land.4. The rate of change for landscape elements accelerated, with all kinds of ecological engineering and global warming being the main driving factors. The integrated dynamic degree of land use types in Barkol County increased during1994-2008compared with that during1980-1994, which demonstrates that the change rate of land use is accelerated, and the fastest period of landscape components change coincided with the development period of animal husbandry. Global warming causes the water area to decrease, leading to herders changing their nomadic lifestyle and settling, thus causing a series of chain reactions such as the increase of the residents and industrial land area.