[Landscape health assessment on Ejin natural oasis].
Landscape scale ecosystem health research could not only provide a basis for integrating natural ecological processes and social economic values, but also provide an appreciated temporal and spatial scale in dealing with the issues of resources and environment. The Ejin natural oasis landscape is at the lower reach of Heihe river basin in the arid inland regions of northwestern China. Owing to the lack of sufficient water resource from the upper reaches of Heihe River, a series of ecological and environmental problems are getting more serious in the oasis in recent years. Based on the past decade landscape change of the Ejin natural oasis, this paper developed a landscape health indicators system including landscape change indicators, bio-physical indicators, eco-environmental indicators and social-economic indicators, and established the criteria and weightiness for assessment indicators. The landscape health index (LHI) was finally figured out as 0. 3042 by using fuzzy comprehensive evaluation method, which showed that the health condition of Ejin natural oasis landscape was ranked to "severely ill level" in the landscape health assessment criteria system. The landscape health of Ejin natural oasis landscape today is much worse than in the past years, with a badly unsustainable developing trend.
Cao
Yu
Y
Geographical Sciences and Natural Resources, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing 100101, China. caoyu@igsnrr.ac.cn
Ouyang
Hua
H
Xiao
Duning
D
D002681:China; D003247:Conservation of Natural Resources; D017753:Ecosystem; D004779:Environment Design; D004782:Environmental Health / Q000706:statistics & numerical data*; D004784:Environmental Monitoring / Q000379:methods*; D005069:Evaluation Studies as Topic; D005843:Geography; D011158:Population Growth