Quantitative Analysis of Huangshui River Basin Landscape over Last Twenty Years using RS and GIS

Abstract

Landscape pattern change will lead to flows and changes of energy, material and nutrients between different land units, and cause sectional ecological processes and functional changes. As the political, economic, cultural and traffic center of Qinghai province, Huangshui River basin landscape structure occur significant changes under the highintensity human disturbance, so the regional environmental effects are clearly obvious. This paper obtains the dynamic change process of the main land use types in Huangshui River Basin through the techniques of RS and GIS, calculates10 types of landscape pattern indices on class level and landscape level and analyzes the landscape changes of lake, river, forest, bare soil, farm land, marsh land, grass land, industrial land and human habitation from 1990 to 2010. The results indicate that: the landscape pattern indices have closely related with the area of land use change; landscape changed obviously in periods from 2000 to 2005; before and after 2000, the regional landscape pattern evolution characteristics showed a significant difference, the economic data collected in the basin, also confirmed this trend. 2000 years later, under the strong support of the government policy, Huangshui River basin ecological environment got continuous development, especially the grass cover and water resources.