Study on the oasis corridor landscape in the arid regions based on RS and GIS methods--application of Jinta Oasis, China.

The study on the oasis corridor landsape is a new hotspot in the ecological environment research in the arid regions. In oasis, main corridor landscape types include river, ditch, shelterbelt and road. This paper introduces the basic ecological effects of the corridor landscape on the transporting mass and energy and obstructing desert landscape expansion and incursion. Using Geographic Information System (GIS), we have researched the corridor distribution and its spatial relationship with other landscape types in the Jinta Oasis. Based on the dynamically monitoring on the landscape pattern change of the Jinta Oasis during the latter 10 years by using Remote Sensing (RS) and GIS, the driving functions of the corridors on this change have been analyzed in detail. The analysis results showed that all kinds of corridors' characteristics can be quantified by the indexes such as length and width, ratio of perimeter and area, density and non-heterogeneity. The total corridor length of Jinta Oasis is 1838.5 km and its density is 2.1 km/km2. The corridor density of the irrigation land, forest and resident area is maximal, which shows that affection degree of the oasis corridors on them is the most. The improvement of the corridors quality is one of the important driving factors on the irrigation land and so on. The organic combination of the RS and GIS technologies and landscape research methods would be an effective means for the corridor landscape research on arid region oasis.