Spatial Pattern of the oasis landscape ecotone in Ebinur lake, Xinjiang, northwest of China

Based on methods of lanscape ecology and TM images of the Ebinur lake during the diffierent period, This paper studies the characteristics of landscape pattern, function and its variation. The ecological process, mechanism and intensity of variation influenced by the human activities and physical factors are analyzed in order to offer the countermeasure and references for restoring and reconstructing destroyed ecological function in the study areas. The results showed that: (1)Landscape ecotone of Ebinur Lake, with higher complex spatial heterogeneity in ecological system,was fragile and unstable to disturbance of the human activities and environment factors, which mainly include rainfall variation, frequency and intensity of wind as well as population,agriculture and livestock changes. (2)The grassland is a dominant type of land use. The proportion of grassland, woodland and the unutilized land is nearly 80% while the agricultural land and inhabitant location is less, less than 8%. Thus, the land use structure should be adijusted to sustain the stability of oasis in Ebinur Lake .Especially three farms near the lake should control the increase of agricutural lands and livestock. (3)The land that not to utilize and the patches of woodlands are 94.78%, but this two kinds of landscape´s average area is small, landscape fragment is obvious. (4)The shapes of grassland patches are not regulations and complicated,the bend level of boundary is distinct.The index of the landscape diversity and homogeneity is high, dominant is small, the distribution of landscape patches is symmetrical. The results indicate the landscape the landscape is complete, and have not phenomenon of obvious fragment.