Expansion of agricultural oasis in the Heihe River Basin of China: Patterns,reasons and policy implications |
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| Institution: | 1. Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, University of Toronto, 25 Willcocks Street, Toronto, Ontario M5S 3B2, Canada;2. Great Lakes Laboratory for Fisheries and Aquatic Sciences, Fisheries and Oceans Canada, 867 Lakeshore Road, Burlington, Ontario L7R 4A6, Canada |
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| Abstract: | The Heihe River Basin (HRB) is the second largest inland river basin in the arid region of northwestern China. An agricultural oasis is a typical landscape in arid regions providing precious fertile soil, living space and ecological services. The agricultural oasis change has been one of the key issues in sustainable development in recent decades. In this paper, we examined the changes in the agricultural oasis in HRB and analyzed the socio-economic and climatic driving forces behind them. It was found that the agricultural oasis in HRB expanded by 25.11% and 14.82% during the periods of 1986–2000 and 2000–2011, respectively. Most of the newly added agricultural oases in HRB were converted from grassland (40.94%) and unused land (40.22%). The expansion in the agricultural oasis mainly occurred in the middle reaches of HRB, particularly in the counties of Shandan, Minle, Jinta and Jiuquan city. Changes in the rural labor force, annual temperature and precipitation have significant positive effects on agricultural oasis changes, while the ratio of irrigated agricultural oases has significant negative effects on agricultural oasis changes. The agricultural oasis expansion in HRB is the combined effect of human activity and climate change. |
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| Keywords: | Agricultural oasis Land-use change Driving forces Panel data model The Heihe River Basin |
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