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Arid Land Geography ›› 2021, Vol. 44 ›› Issue (5): 1471-1482.doi: 10.12118/j.issn.1000–6060.2021.05.27

• Regional Development • Previous Articles     Next Articles

Land use change and land ecological security assessment in the river basins of northwestern China

WU Jingquan(),WU Mingwan,ZANG Chuanfu()   

  1. School of Geography, South China Normal University, Guangzhou 510631, Guangdong, China
  • Received:2020-08-28 Revised:2021-02-01 Online:2021-09-25 Published:2021-09-22
  • Contact: Chuanfu ZANG E-mail:jingquan78690@163.com;chuanfuzang@163.com

Abstract:

Land is the most basic natural resource and is the material basis for human survival and development; change in land use/cover, as an important factor affecting global environmental change, is the most direct reflection of human activities. In the context of China’s rapid economic and social development, there is a competition between protecting the ecologically fragile nature of land and the huge demand for urban land development. A lack of attention to maintaining ecological land use and the irrational use of land resources are two factors that have exacerbated land ecological disorders. Therefore, exploring the dynamics of land use change and studying the state of regional land ecological security have become important research elements for regional sustainable development. The dynamic changes in land use and land ecological security have attracted widespread attention. This study uses the ArcGIS spatial analysis software to reveal the characteristics of dynamic land use change in the river basins of northwestern China from 1990 to 2018 and uses the pressure-state-response model and the entropy weighting method to assign weights to indicators and analyze the status of land ecological security in the river basins of northwestern China. The results of the study show that (1) the comprehensive land use change of the river basins of northwestern China from 2015 to 2018 is 2.65%, showing a drastic change in land use. The most rapid growth in a single annual average is observed in urban and rural construction land after 2000 with a change of 4.16%. Grassland is mainly replaced by sand, cropland, and other unused land, and the conversion between sand and other unused land in the desert areas of the basin is stable. (2) The highest weight of the state layer in the evaluation index system of land ecological security in the river basins of northwestern China is 0.4985. From the ranking of index weights, it can be seen that economic and social development, wetland area, and population growth are important factors affecting the evaluation of land ecological security of the river basins of northwestern China. (3) The land ecological safety index of the river basins of northwestern China showed an increase from 1990 to 2018, remained relatively constant at an unsafe level from 1990 to 2014, and decreased after 2015; the land ecological safety of the river basins of northwestern China has improved. The problem of land desertification is an important limiting factor to the healthy development of land ecosystems in the basin. In the process of improving land ecological security, more importance needs to be placed on the conversion of desert land to ecological land, and attention needs to be paid to the construction and maintenance of ecological land. This study investigates the dynamic changes in land use and land ecological security in the river basins of northwestern China, with the aim of providing a scientific basis for land use planning and management in the river basins of northwestern China. Furthermore, this work provides examples of land use changes and land ecological security studies at the natural watershed scale.

Key words: the river basins of northwestern China, dynamic changes of land use, pressure-state-response (P-S-R) model, comprehensive evaluation method, land ecological security