International Journal of Applied Earth Observations and Geoinformation (Dec 2021)
Spatial-temporal characteristics of ecosystem health in Central Asia
Abstract
Land-use/land-cover change in Central Asia has led to ecological disasters such as draining of the Aral Sea, salinization, desertification that ultimately affect the ecosystem's health. However, only a few studies have systematically assessed the spatial-temporal characteristics of ecosystem health in Central Asia using an integrated ecosystem assessment method. Therefore, this study aims to assess the ecosystem health of Central Asia using multi-source high-resolution data as the indicator and the integrated ecosystem vigor-ecosystem organization-ecosystem elasticity (V-O-E) model. The result showed that most of the areas in Central Asia are in a weak state of ecosystem vigor, ecosystem organization, ecosystem elasticity, and ecosystem health. The fragile state of the ecosystem health was highly due to the decreasing density of forest land, farmland, waterbody, and the increasing density of bare land and artificial land. The area of farmland gradually decreased, from 878639.08 km2 in 2000 to 719128.08 km2 in 2010 and 584251.36 km2 in 2017. The forest of Central Asia has been declining continuously from 161998.69 km2 in 2000 to 115343.96 km2 in 2010 to 81185.10 km2 in 2017 and has become spatially heterogeneous. Interestingly, the area of forest land in Xinjiang increased from 18216.14 km2 in 2000 to 20970.92 km2 in 2010 and 23098.12 km2 in 2017, although there was a decrease in the overall forest land in other countries of Central Asia; this shows that China's afforestation and reforestation policies during the last two decades had notable contributions to the ecosystem vigor and ecosystem elasticity in Xinjiang, which led to the increase in ecosystem health in Xinjiang. Hence, it is urgent to initiate integrated water management measures, limit the population growth and take adequate measures to enhance the techniques of farmland development to enhance the ecosystem health of Central Asia.
