Dynamic monitoring of grassland degradation with remote sensing and the strategy of ecological restoration in Shandan County of Heihe Basin

摘要

Remote sensing(RS) technology, which has made great progress in many applied fields, can provide an efficient means for active identification of grassland degradation. In this paper, we used the Landsat TM images in 1980's and 2000 to monitor Ihe dynamics of grassland degradation in Shandan County where was famous with its army horse feeding and the important self-restraint regions of soil and water in the upper Heihe basin in Northwest China. By integrating RS and Geographic Information System(GIS), we calculated the amounts and the changes of grassland types during the past 15 years. Using satellite monitoring and retrieval means to get the productivity of grassland, analyzed the carrying capacity of livestock, and classified the grassland into 4 degradation levels and created the grassland degradation maps. Then, we use the landscape ecology principles to design the recovering planning of the corresponding degraded regions. At last, we promoted the corresponding strategies to restore the different degraded grasslands in Shandan County. This approach to dynamic monitoring of grassland degradation and the retrieval of grassland productivity is a fully digital operation, so it makes best use of computer and GIS to manage, display, query and map the grassland degradation data.