Abstract:

Presently, based on the production-living-ecological function, the regional understanding of the transformation of land use function and the research results on eco-environmental effects in northwest eco-environmentally vulnerable areas of China remain relatively rare. Accordingly, this paper attempts to reveal the impact of land use function transformation on the ecological environment, hoping to provide a reference for promoting the rational allocation of regional land resources and guide the sustainable development of ecologically vulnerable areas to help construct an ecological civilization. We used thematic mapper image data from 1993, 2001, 2009, and 2017 to obtain land use change data of Yuli County, Xinjiang, China. According to the production-living-ecological function classification, we quantitatively analyzed the land use function change, land use function transformation, and the ecological impact in Yuli County using an area weighting method, land use transfer matrix, eco-environmental quality index, and ecological contribution rate of land use function transformation, among other methods. The results demonstrated the following: (1) From 1993 to 2017, both the area of production land and that of living land continued to increase, and the ecological land decreased as a whole. According to the transformation of land use function, the largest transfer-out area was grassland ecological land, followed by other ecological lands, whereas the urban living land was the smallest such area. (2) The ecological environment quality index of Yuli County decreased from 0.07629 in 1993 to 0.06378 in 2001, after which it continued to increase to 0.07339 in 2017. The overall ecological environment quality deteriorated but then entered a state of gradual recovery and improvement. (3) The transfer of other ecological lands with low ecological environment quality index to wetland ecological land and forage ecological land was the dominant factor in the improvement of ecological environment quality. By contrast, the occupation of forage ecological land by other ecological land and agricultural production land was the dominant factor in the deterioration of environmental quality. Generally speaking, over the past 25 years, trends of ecological environment deterioration and improvement have coexisted, although the trend of improvement has been stronger than that of deterioration.

Key words: production-living-ecological function, land use transformation, eco-environmental effect, Yuli County