The constraints and driving forces of oasis development in arid region: a case study of the Hexi Corridor in northwest China

Abstract

The oasis, a special landscape with the integration of nature and humanity in the arid region, has undergone an enormous transformation during the past decades. To gain a better understanding of the tradeoff between economic growth and oases stability in the arid land, we took the oases in the Hexi Corridor as a case to explore the constraints of oases development and the driving factors of oases expansion. The dynamic changes and spatial distribution patterns underwent by the oases were examined using multispectral remote sensing imagery. The constraints of oasis development in arid land were investigated by the grid-transformed model, as well as the index system of driving forces was analyzed using the grey incidence model based on the data from statistics yearbooks. The oasis area in the Hexi Corridor had tremendous changes expanded 40% from 1986 to 2015, the stable oasis area was 9062 km2, while the maximum area reached 16,374 km2. The constraints for oases of topography, hydrology and heat condition are as follow: The elevation of oasis ranged from 1000 to 1800 m, peaked in 1500 m; the slope of oasis distribution was flatter than 3 degrees; the aspect of oases on slope land concentrated in northeast and north, accounting for more than 60%. The main driving forces of oasis spatial expansion in the arid region were population, water resource, economy, policies, and other factors. These results are expected to (1) improve the rationality of oasis development, and (2) promote the sustainable planning and management of oases in the arid land.

Spatio-temporal patterns of oasis dynamics in China’s drylands between 1987 and 2017

“…The oases and their surrounding deserts, which are among the important strategic land reserves in China, have been transformed into cropland on a large scale (Zhou et al 2015, Lü et al 2020, Pan et al 2021. These transformations have contributed to the rapid expansion of cropland, a phenomenon that has been reported in previous smallscale studies (Zhao et al 2013, Xie et al 2014, Zuo et al 2014, Bie and Xie 2020, Gong and Liu 2021.…”

Application progress of grey model technology in agricultural science

“…In the aspect of agricultural risk assessment, the existing literature mainly studies agrometeorological disasters by using various types of grey evaluation methods, focusing on the selection of main influencing factors (Bie and Xie, 2020), risk tolerance (Wang et al , 2013; Sun et al , 2022), disaster assessment (Wang et al , 2010; Xu et al , 2016), quality and safety (Huang, 2016) and so on. Through principal component analysis, grey clustering analysis, support vector machine and other methods, Qiao et al (2014) can accurately monitor the condition of wheat take-all disease through near-earth imaging spectral images, which has guiding significance for the control of wheat take-all disease.…”

The Spatial Distribution Characteristics of the Cultivated Land Quality in the Diluvial Fan Terrain of the Arid Region: A Case Study of Jimsar County, Xinjiang, China

“…The water resource and climate are important environmental factors that restrict the sustainable development of agriculture in arid regions [49,50], exerting inevitable and considerable influence on the quality of the cultivated land in arid regions. To indicate the influence of environmental constraints on the cultivated land quality and enhance the synthesis of the cultivated land quality evaluation, this study established the irrigation water conditions as the first-grade index under the dimension of the farming conditions and established the climate conditions as the first-grade index and the underground water depth as the second-grade index under the dimension of the natural environment conditions.…”