Zoning grassland protection area by using remote sensing and cellular automata model with a case study in Xilingol "typical steppe" grassland in northern China

Grassland deterioration due to climate variability and human disturbance in arid and semi-arid areas is becoming a serious environmental problem in China. Establishing grassland protection area to control the overgrazing is regarded as one of the effective measure to protect grassland. The paper presented a new method that integrates cellular automata (CA) model, geographical information system and remote sensing to zone grassland protection area with the case study in Xilingol "typical steppe" grassland in Inner Mongolia autonomous regions of China. The basic idea of the method is to extract "seed points" of the grassland protection area by using remote sensing techniques and geographical information system (GIS) at first, then simulate the grassland protection area by CA model. Since the method tries to satisfy the zoning requirement of the grassland protection area and utilizes the advantages of remote sensing techniques and CA models, satisfactory results have been produced for governmental officials and planners with manpower saved