Abstract: The shrinkage of the Aiby lake, located in Boletala Prefecture of North Xinjiang, and the aggravate of the surrounding drought and the increase of human activities in the Aiby Lake area have severely affected the local eco-environment and social development. This paper, based on analyzing the soil physica-l chemical properties, counting the species of plants, the composition and coverage of plant communities as well as studying their rule of distribution, of the different types of soils and quadrats for plant communities, indicates that the special heterogeneity of soil physica-l chemical properties, abiotic factors, is a main cause of the difference for special distribution of vegetation. This represents that the changes of soil textures, salt contents, pH values, nutrients and water condition resulted in the variation of constructive and dominant species. In other words, the soil erosion, drought, alkal-i salinization, infertilitation caused the constructive and dominant species of arbor, shrub, sem-i shrub and good perennial grass plant communities to be replaced by drought-tolerant, salt-tolerant min-i sem-i shrub, halophytes and annual plants and the plant species and the vegetation coverage to be decreased. In inverse, the degradation of vegetation would intensify the soil erosion and infertility. Therefore, no other than understanding the coupling relationship between soil and vegetation can we recover and rehabilitate the eco-environment of the Aiby Lake area.

Key words: the Aiby Lake area, soil heterogeneity, ecological distribution, impact