Prediction of Landscape Pattern of Soft Sandstone Area (SSA) after Seabuckthorn Planting

Abstract

As a pioneer plant in the gully slopes in the Soft Sandstone Area (SSA) for eco-economical consideration, ten years (1999-2008) planting of seabuckthorn has made 1642.83 km2, or 9.84%, of the total area of SSA change into seabuckthorn coverage. In SSA the landscape has been divided into 9 types, such as seabuckthorn, sand, water, settlement, bush, open vegetation, forest, grassland and unused land. Seabuckthorn type is separated from the bush type for estimating the role of seabuckthron planting. By means of the Markov model, the developing trends of every landscape types can be determined to support the seabuckthorn project which influences the landscape pattern deeply in SSA. The prediction shows that the optimism ratio of seabuckthorn in the future should be 10.21%, the open vegetation 32.25%, and the forest percentage under 10%, which is a very wise tactics to avoid the serious death of various vegetations in SSA to match the local arid eco-environment.