Human driving forces: Analysis of rocky desertification in karst region in Guanling County, Guizhou Province

Abstract

Karst rocky desertification is one of the major ecological and environmental problems that threaten the sustainable development of southwestern China. It is caused by irrational and intensive land-use patterns in karst geo-ecological environment. Therefore, it is vital to identify how human forces work on this degraded environment. Based on the soil erosion information in 2000 and remote sensing images of Guanling County collected in 2000 and 2007, four grades of karst rocky desertification data in 14 villages of Guanling County were extracted. Impacts of population, affluence, and other human forces on karst rocky desertification were analyzed using STIRPAT model. The results show that: 1) Factors of population and affluence had strong influence on karst rocky desertification. In the STIRPAT model analysis, the population and affluence coefficients were positive, indicating that the increase in population and affluence would lead to more serious desertification. 2) Factors of farmer correlated with karst rocky desertification negatively, especially the way of viewing the relationship between people and nature, and the level of knowledge about rocky desertification. Government behavior was not a significant factor in this analysis.3) The findings provide evidence that STIRPAT model can be used to analyze the relationship between human driving forces and rocky desertification.

Characterization and interaction of driving factors in karst rocky desertification: a case study from Changshun, China

“…Human activities, such as farming on hilly lands, overgrazing, and felling of forest and shrubs for cooking (Jiang et al, 2014;Li et al, 2009b;Liu et al, 2008a;Wu et al, 2011;Yan and Cai, 2013), are rather difficult to measure in a straightforward manner and would not be depicted at a detailed spatial distribution. Instead, they were represented by proxies of distances to roads and settlements in our study, which have proven to be acceptable in recent studies.…”

“…The evolution of KRD is associated with a considerable number of natural factors, e.g., meteorological factors including temperature and precipitation (Peng and Wang, 2012;Xiong et al, 2009), topographic factors consisting of the elevation, slope (Huang and Cai, 2007;Jiang et al, 2009) and aspect (Zhou et al, 2007), and lithological factors (i.e., types of carbonate rock assemblages) (Li et al, 2009b;Wang et al, 2004a). Human activities, such as farming on hilly land, overgrazing, and felling of forest and shrubs for cooking (Jiang et al, 2014;Li et al, 2009bLi et al, , 2008aWu et al, 2011;Yan and Cai, 2013), have also recently become pivotal factors in KRD. The natural and anthropogenic factors above jointly influence the evolution of KRD in southwestern China.…”

Effect of karst rocky desertification on soil fungal communities in Southwest China

“…The karst mountainous region of Southwest China, an area spanning approximately 540,000 km 2 , is among the world's three largest continuous karst regions (Huang et al, 2009;Qi et al, 2013;Yang et al, 2013). Over the past decades, inappropriate agricultural practices and over-exploitation of sloping lands have caused these areas to suffer greatly from karst rocky desertification (KRD), resulting in severe soil erosion and widespread exposure of basement rocks (Wu et al, 2011). KRD events can have a large impact on the structure and functioning of ecosystems through a variety of effects on soil, including structure deterioration, texture and porosity degeneration, decline in water capacity, and leanness (Huang et al, 2009;Peng et al, 2013;Tang et al, 2013).…”

Space-time analysis of the changing patterns of population pressure on the ecological environment in China

“…Obviously, we may see how significant is the impact of population size on eco-environmental quality, and how important it is to study the eco-environmental pressure brought by population. To quantitatively evaluate the environmental pressure brought by regional population activities, numerous studies have been carried out at home and abroad, and some indices and methods have been proposed, such as the conceptual model method (Gao & Zhang 2007. Wu et al 2011, the supply and demand balance method , the multi-objective decision-making and analysis method (Xie et al 2011), the state-space method (Yu et al 2003), the ecological footprint analysis method (Li et al 2010), the green accounting method (Li & Sun 2006;Golinski et al 2008), the emergy analysis method (Kang et al 2010), the pollutant emission index method (Gu et al 2009), the system dynamics method (Chen & Chen 2005), and the input-output method (Cao & Xie 2007).…”