The dynamic monitoring of horqin sand land using remote sensing

Abstract

Horqin Sand Land is regarded as the typical region for studying the problem of desertification. The integration of 3S (GIS, GPS and RS) techniques offer a most helpful method to study and monitor the dynamics of desertification. Based on the data derived from 3 periods’ multitemporal Landsat TM imagery of the 1990s, the regional land use and dynamics of desertification in Horqin Sand Land were studied. The main results revealed that: 1) as long as the general change tendency was concerned, the desertification of Horqin Sand Land would continue to spread; 2) there was a gradual decrease in the area of both moving sand dunes and semi-stabilized ones, which meant that fruitful progress had been made to control the desertification during the 1990s; 3) as a result of unreasonable cultivation, the total area of stabilized sand dunes and grassland in the middle and western region decreased obviously. It suggested that the increasing damage caused by human was leading to the hazard of further desertification. So in the future, it is necessary to take more effective measures to control the spread of desertification and restore the degraded ecosystems for the purpose of optimizing the global eco-environment in Horqin Sand Land.