Abstract:
This study aims to explore the land use change and its future development trend in the Aral reclamation area, a typical artificial oasis in the arid region in northwest China and to provide a reference for the regulation and management of land use change in similar areas. After the multi-temporal synthesis of monthly images of each year, annual land use classification maps were obtained using the support vector machine method. Then, the land use change was analyzed from the aspects of area change, type transformation, and spatial dynamic change. Finally, the cellular automaton (CA)-Markov model was used to simulate the land use change in 2050 and 2080, and the sudden changes and their driving factors were explored using the cumulative departure method and the path analysis. The results of this study are as follows. During 1990—2019, the area of arable land, garden land, water bodies, and construction land in the Aral reclamation area showed an increasing trend. Among them, the arable land and garden land increased in area mainly due to the conversion of unused land outside the areas along the Tarim River. By 2080, the unused land in the northeastern and southeastern parts of the reclamation area will be gradually reclaimed. As a result, arable land, garden land, and construction land will significantly increase. The area of various types of land use in the Aral reclamation reached a turning point in 2005, showing a sharp increase in the area of arable land, garden land, and building land. This was mainly driven by total population, gross agricultural product, and cotton prices. It can be concluded that it is necessary to develop policies on the sustainable development of arable land, to strictly control the area of construction land, and to construct a reasonable land use structure in future land development and utilization.