Original Articles

The Response of Vegetation to Water Transport in the Lower Reaches of the Heihe River

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  • 1. Institute of Hydraulic Research, YRCC, Zhengzhou 450003, China;
    2. College of Water Sciences, Beijing Normal University, Beijing 100875, China;
    3. Institute of Geographic Science and Natural Resources Research, CAS, Beijing 100101, China

Received date: 2009-02-26

  Revised date: 2009-06-02

  Online published: 2009-07-25

Supported by

National Key Technology R&D Program for National 11th Five-Year Plan, No.2006BAB06B00-08; Ministry of Water Resources Commonweal Special Project, No.2007SHZ1-19

Abstract

Due to water reduction, the area of oasis degraded rapidly, and many eco-environmental problems have emerged in the lower Heihe River. For the sake of improving the eco-environment, and deterring the trend of further degradation of the oasis, the water transport project in the lower reaches of the Heihe River was carried out in 2000. According to the water line, there are great changes of temporal and spatial distribution of water resources in the lower Heihe River in the past nine years. As a result, the vegetation in the lower Heihe River also changed. In order to objectively evaluate the influence of water regulation on vegetation in this region, in this paper, by means of field surveys and remote sensing, the response range and extent of the groundwater were described, and the variation of natural vegetation in the lower reaches as a result of change of the groundwater level were also described in about five years, and the rules of groundwater response to the ecological water transport were analyzed preliminarily. These results show that there are obvious effects of water regulation on the vegetation, and that the eco-environment is experiencing a good change in the lower Heihe River.

Cite this article

JIANG Xiaohui1, LIU Changming2, 3 . The Response of Vegetation to Water Transport in the Lower Reaches of the Heihe River[J]. Acta Geographica Sinica, 2009 , 64(7) : 791 -797 . DOI: 10.11821/xb200907003

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