Abstract
Irrational use and management of water and land are associated with poor hydro-geological conditions causing water logging and salinization problems, possibly leading to farmland abandonment and economic loss. This poses a great challenge to the sustainability of oasis’ and requires desalinization through reasonable landscape design by multiple crossing studies so we collected traditional knowledge by field interviews and literature schemes, except for the modern desalinization approaches by literature, and we found that the salinization problem has been solved by traditional land reclamation, traditional drainage, natural drainage and flood irrigation, locally. It is worth mentioning that the traditional reclamation in salinized areas requires flood water, sand dunes and a salinized pit area; the sand dunes are used to elevate the pit surface, and water is used to leach salt from the soil. Natural drainage (the depth and width are 4–10 m and 50–100 m, respectively) caused by flash flooding has significant benefits to some salinized villages in the range of 3000–5000 m and ancient groundwater drainage systems, such as Karez are supporting the oasis with drainage water for centuries. In addition landscape characteristics, salinization and hydro-geological conditions of the oasis were studied from Landsat image, DEM, literature and field photos. Then based on the gathered information above, a desalinization model was developed to decrease the groundwater table and salt leaching in the water logging landscape. Then according to landscape characteristics, different desalinization approaches were recommended for different landscapes. To address environmental uncertainties, an adaptive landscape management and refinement approach was developed, and acceptance of the model was validated by stakeholder opinion. The results provide guidelines for sustainable desalinization design and highlight the importance of combining traditional knowledge and modern ecological principles in sustainable landscape design.
Highlights
Interactive zones between irrigated farmland and the natural desert ecosystem, known as eco-tone areas, can develop secondary salinization as a result of irrational management of land and water resources with inherent flat geo-topological problems [1]
This poses a great challenge to the sustainability of oasis’ and requires desalinization through reasonable landscape design by multiple crossing studies so we collected traditional knowledge by field interviews and literature schemes, except for the modern desalinization approaches by literature, and we found that the salinization problem has been solved by traditional land reclamation, traditional drainage, natural drainage and flood irrigation, locally
Our work suggests that traditional knowledge is the main intellectual source for modern sustainable ecological design.It is reported that, the groundwater table was significantly declined, for example, the Dunhuang oasis’sgroundwater table has been undergoing significant declined, owing to greater pumping, due to expanded irrigation and social-economic development [53]
Summary
Interactive zones between irrigated farmland and the natural desert ecosystem, known as eco-tone areas, can develop secondary salinization as a result of irrational management of land and water resources with inherent flat geo-topological problems [1]. A lack of rational land and water management can cause excessive water logging in eco-tone areas (by groundwater seepage); other agricultural areas will experience an induced water shortage [8,9]. This demonstrates the great requirement of landscape designing to maximize the efficiency of land and water resource use and an opportunity exists to improve the eco-tone ecosystem (decrease the salinization threat) through ecological design and management [10,11]. It has been proven that the anthropogenic impacts on salinization can be positive [12]; artificial control of the salinization issue will be a key step towards sustainable social development in the oasis
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