| Digital elevation model (DEM) contains plentiful information about geomorphology. Studying geomorphology by DEM can quantitatively describe geomorphological structure and spatial variation. Shanxi province is located in the Loess Plateau, the Taihang Mountains and the Ordos Plateau and other landform units, which is widely distributed loess, has serious soil erosion and intensely land erosional cutting. Therefore, the study of Shanxi geomorphology has important guiding significance for the effective implementation of reasonable water conservation, ecological and environmental construction and so on.Based on SRTM-DEM with90resolutions, we extracted a series of geomorphological factors, such as slope, aspect, relief amplitude, surface incision, and then we analyzed the features of landform on the study area to divide the landforms of Shanxi province. Furthermore we conduct fractal research on land use types of different landforms. The conclusions can be drawn as follows:(1)Geomorphological map specifications of China (1:1,000,000) is made as the reference to study area, we divide the elevation into two types on Shanxi province, low and medial. From the height distribution, Shanxi Province, showing both sides of the high and middle low, is "concave" word distribution. The variance coefficient of elevation of the study area where is larger is mainly in Shanxi Taihang Mountains along the right margin and the left margin along the southern section of the Yellow River. And the smaller is mainly in basin area. Overall, the characteristics of the variance coefficient of elevation in study area are that the edge is larger than the inner region.(2)In combination of Shanxi province reality, the slope can be divided into six levels. In most regions of the study area slope at less than25°, accounting for96.24%of the entire study area, within this area ratio with slope between5°～15°is44.81%. The slope greater than25°in the region accounts for only3.76%of the study area. (3) Combine with geomorphological map specifications of China (1:1,000,000) and the reality of Shanxi province, we divide the geomorphology into six types on the study area: plane, mesa, hills, low relief amplitude mountain, medial amplitude mountain and high amplitude mountain. Mostly planes are located in basins, such as DaTong basin, XinDing basin and YunCheng basin. Low relief amplitude mountain is largest and widely that distributs in various regions of Shanxi Province. Overall, relief amplitude which is from north to south in central Shanxi Province along the basin is smaller than which is on hilly area.(4)Based on relief amplitude and elevation, we divide the macroscopic geomorphology into twelve types on Shanxi province. They are low altitude plains, low altitude plateaus, low altitude hills, small amplitude low hills, medial amplitude low hills, large amplitude low hills, medial altitude plains, medial altitude plateaus, medial altitude hills, small amplitude medial hills, medial amplitude medial hills and large amplitude medial hills.(5)Through the fractal study of Shanxi land use, we know that the landuse structure has obvious fractal. Fractal dimension of Shanxi land use types in decreasing order is waters, farmland, residential and industrial land, grassland, garden, woodland, and other sites. Different landforms are not only relevant with land use structure, but also affect its fractal dimension and stability index, fractal dimension and stability index of different land use types are also different under the same landforms. |
