Regional Structure and Spatial Morphology Characteristics of Oasis Urban Agglomeration in Arid Area——A Case of Urban Agglomeration in Northern Slope of Tianshan Mountains,Northwest China

It is great important to the health development of urban agglomeration to correctly understand the formation and development law of regional structure of urban agglomeration.Employing the analysis methods like fractal theory and quantitative statistics,coupling with the use of remote sensing images and other spatial data,this article discusses the urban agglomeration of oasis on the northern slope of the Tianshan Mountains in an arid area,and conducts the researches on its city scale,spatial distribution and individual form from 1990 to 2005.The result shows that it has loose hierarchical scale structure and polarization trend of population distribution while its hierarchical scale structure tends to mature.Under the influence of natural conditions,the spatial layout of urban agglomeration of oasis has macro characteristics that suggest cities distributed along oasis edges(dense or sparse),spatially expand along rivers,and cluster around traffic branches.The connectivity among the cities is high and shows an internal organization form of a banding distribution.The whole spatial shape of the internal structure of cities presents a "dumbbell" form,with mononuclear phenomenon receding and multi-nuclear appearing gradually.Individual cities spatially expand along rivers,portraying a long strip appearance.It indicates that the urban agglomeration of oasis shows regular and close structure but with a tendency to be complicated form and the loose structure.In the development of urban agglomeration,the authors recommend that the development of the city with good economic development conditions should be strengthened,and more attention be put into regional planning.

Characteristics and Driving Forces of Spatial Expansion of Oasis Cities and Towns in Hexi Corridor, Gansu Province, China

This paper presents an integrated study of urban spatial expansion in the Hexi Corridor, Gansu Province, China based on TM, ETM remote sensing data in 1987, 1990, 1995, 2000, 2006 and 2011. The study explores the characteristics of urban spatial expansion and dynamic mechanism by using expansion speed index, expansion intensity index, compact index, fractal dimension, and extended flexibility index. We built the index system of influencing factors of urban spatial expansion by using the grey incidence model. The results showed that urban spatial expansion rate in the Hexi Corridor has been on the upward trend since 1987. Expansion intensity showed an obvious upward trend, however, the upward trend varied in different urban areas. In addition, the urban structure was loose relatively, but the urban compactness was more obvious. The urban spatial form tended to be simple, and the urban land use tended to become more intensive. Urban spatial expansion experienced several stages: padding internally, external expansion and padding internally. The main driving factors of urban spatial expansion are not the urban water resources and the oasis scale, but one or several factors such as economy, traffic, population, resource and national policy.

Coupling relation between water and salt in irrigation area on a catchments scale

Water resource is the important factor for sustainable development in Weigan River catchments in western China. Based on ecological hydrology principles, the coupling relation between water and salt is monitored and analyzed. The water quality for irrigation in oasis ecosystem has a larger variable range in arid area, which depending on the input water resource and underground water mineralization degree and water chemical component on the catchments scale, the water and salt coupling is decided by the climate condition and soil feature and vegetation characteristics as well as human activity. Meanwhile, temporal and spatial change between water and salt is quite complicated. The environmental management should be paid attention to considering in irrigation area in the catchments.

Spatio-temporal Distributions of Tropospheric NO_2 over Oases in Taklimakan Desert, China

Soil biogenic NO emission is one of the most important sources of atmospheric nitrogen oxides(NOx) worldwide. However, the estimation of soil source, especially in arid areas presents large uncertainties because of the substantial lack of measurements. In this study, we selected the Ruoqiang oases on the southeastern edge of the Taklimakan Desert, China as the study area and applied Ozone Monitoring Instrument(OMI) NO2 retrievals(DOMINO v2.0, 2005–2011) to investigate the spatial distribution and seasonal variations in tropospheric NO2 vertical column density(VCD). High NO2 VCDs were observed over the oases(farmlands and natural vegetation), with the highest value obtained during summer, and lowest during winter. Pulses were observed during spring. We conducted in-situ measurements in June 2011 in Milan oasis and employed ground-based multi-axis differential optical absorption spectroscopy(MAX-DOAS) instruments to validate satellite NO2 retrievals. The findings are as follows: 1) in the study area soil biogenic NO emission is the dominant source of tropospheric NO2; 2) oases(farmlands) are hotspots of tropospheric NO2, and a higher increase in tropospheric NO2 is found in oases from winter to summer; and 3) enhancement of soil biogenic NO emission due to soil managements is predictable. Given the rapid agricultural development in the southern Uygur Autonomous Region of Xinjiang, researches on soil biogenic NO emission and increase in tropospheric NOx should be given more importance.