The Research On Horqin Sandy Land Use Changes In The Last Decade

Land Use/Cover Change (LUCC) is an important part and one of themain reasons of global environmental change. From regional perspectivestudying land use/cover change has become a popular research. Recently,owing to unreasonable land use, like dramatic population growth,over-farming,over-grazing, and the great fluctuation of climate infarming-pastoral zone in northern China, the area of sand has been expended,and has had a serious negative effect on the local ecological environment.Horqin sand land is a typical fragile ecological environment area whichis located in the east part of farming-pastoral zone in northern china. And itis greatly affected by human activities. Also it is a typical area which isgoverned by nation with labor and materials. Since the development of westarea in2000, with the implementation of every protection policy, grain forgreen project has achieved initial success. However,2000, in Inner Mongolia,the general situation of current land use/cover is still severe. And regionalissues which were caused by desertification have not been fundamentallyresolved. Therefore, a comprehensive grasp of the basic situations of sandland use and its dynamics is the importance of sustainable development,ecological environment construction and building harmonious society in theregion. In this paper, taking an example of the typical area of the Horqin sandland-KeErQinZuoYihouQi county, using the original satellite images of2000and2009as a data source. At first, based on a division of land use types,integrating remote sensing data, enhancing and correcting images, and get theland use digital data through visualizing the images; Secondly, combined withtraditional methods, such as field work and fixing sites, error rectifying thevisualized data and then taking the land use change data of studying area fromrecent decade through comparing two periods of land use change. Finally,combined with the feature of land use change of studying area analyzed thedriven factors of these change.It showed that from2000to2009:(1) the area of farmland increased584.26km~2, and the area of a second type of farmland,water farmland, increased slightly, but dry land is still the majority offarmland;(2) the growth of woodland was the most apparent, about1.08times, and second types of woodland, sparse woodland mostly went up, asthe main type of increasing woodland;(3) the area of grassland reducedappearently,1236.58km~2, but the area of high coverage grassland grew, hadan improvement in the quality of grassland coverage;(4) The reduction ofwater area was severe, more than the half of the original water area;(5) Withthe rapid social and economic development and increasing population, urbanand rural construction land area increased155.10km~2;(6) the area ofnon-used land declined276.26km~2; the second types, on the one hand, thearea of sand decreased significantly, and desertification was still the mainproblem of study area; on the other hand, saline land grew seriously,salinization was aggravated；(7) It showed that the natural and artificialfactors led to land use/cover changes. For land use/cover change inKezuohouqi county recent10years, natural factors played the significant roleon it, but natural factors did not change seriously. It played a relatively stableand cumulative effect, was fundamental driving factor of land use/coverchange. While during the same period, the serious interference of humanactivities on the environment was relatively active, was the main driver ofland use/cover change from current and future short spatial and temporalscales. Therefore, human factors were the main driving forces of landuse/cover change in Horqin Sand land from recent ten years.