Land use change and its effects on water quality in typical inland lake of arid area in China.

ABSTRACT

Land-use change is very important for determining and assessing the influence of human activity on aquatic environment of rivers and lakes. The present work with Bosten River basin as the subject, analyzes features of dynamic land-use change of the basin from 1993 to 2013, in order to study the influence of land-use pattern change on the basin water quality, according to the land-use/land-cover(LUCC) chart from 2000 to 2013 made by ArcGIS and ENVI. It shows cultivated land, wetland and forestland constitute most of Bosten River basin, taking up over 41.7% of the total; from 1993-2000, LUCC of the basin is relatively small, with an increase of cultivated land, residential-industry land, water wetlands by 15.09%-18.33%,most of which are transformed from forestland, grassland and unused land; from 2000-2013, LUCC of the basin is relatively significant, with a continuing and bigger increase of cultivated land and Residential-industry area, most of which are transformed from water wetlands and unused land. Based on analysis of landuse pattern and water quality index, it can be told that water pollution is positively correlated to cultivated land and residential-industry area and negatively correlated to water and grassland. Also, the influence of land-use pattern change on water quality has been discussed, whose finding can serve as the scientific evidence for land-use optimization and water pollution control.