›› 2016, Vol. 28 ›› Issue (6): 162-168.

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Analysis of Driving Forces of Oasis Expansion and Ecological Risk Management——A Case Study of Yanqi Oasis of Xinjiang, China

Jalalidin·Bilali1,2, Wang Xiaojun3, Shi Minjun1,4   

  1. 1. School of Economics and Management, University of Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing 100190;
    2. Students Affairs Office, Xinjiang University, Urumuqi 830046;
    3. Institute of Agricultural Economics and Development, Chinese Academy of Agricultural Sciences, Beijing 100081;
    4. School of Economics, Renming University of China, Beijing 100872
  • Received:2014-11-01 Online:2016-06-28 Published:2016-07-07

Abstract:

The northwestern arid region serves as an ecological guard for China's ecological security. It is very important to deal properly with the tradeoff between improving agricultural production capacity and ecological risk management in the arid region. This paper focuses on driving forces of oasis expansion, which may not only contribute comprehensive understanding of land use change mechanism, but also provide policy implication for oasis ecological risk management. A Bio-economic Model is developed to analyze the farmer households' land use behavior under different scenarios including increasing water supple, introducing advanced irrigation technology, implementing strictly water resource management and land reclamation in central region of the oasis and the desert-oasis transitional region. The results show that farmers' behavior for pursuing income maximization accelerated farmland expansion. Incomplete implementation of water resource management provided condition of water resource for farmland reclamation. Overuse of water resource, over-exploitation of groundwater and water saving caused by adopting advanced irrigation technology has been offset by the increased water use with farmland reclamation. The results indicate that oasis ecological risk management needs effective water resource management.

Key words: modern oasis expansion, driving forces, ecological risk management, water resource management, Bio-economic model, Yanqi oasis