The Scientific World Journal

Research Article

Quantitative Analysis of Driving Factors of Grassland Degradation: A Case Study in Xilin River Basin, Inner Mongolia

Table 1

Candidate variables and the succession cases.

(a) Variables used to fit the probability of vegetation successions by BLR


Variable abbr.	Description	Minimum	Maximum	Mean	Std. dev

^†NDVI₈₅	Normalized difference vegetation index in 1985	−0.22	0.59	0.19	0.07
^†NDVI₉₈	Normalized difference vegetation index in 1998	−0.21	0.66	0.16	0.06
^†DV_{(SG_85)}	Density of vegetation LC in 1985	0.00	90.00	52.91	29.63
^†DV_{(SG_98)}	Density of vegetation LC in 1998	0.00	90.00	66.01	20.62
^†DV_{(LC_85)}	Density of vegetation SG in 1985	0.00	90.00	12.62	21.59
^†DV_{(LC_98)}	Density of vegetation SG in 1998	0.00	80.00	5.84	11.14
^‡DS (km)	Distance to village settlement center	0.00	8.10	3.53	0.59
^‡DR₈₅ (km)	Density of road in 1985	0.00	2.10	1.40	1.22
^‡DR₉₈ (km)	Density of road in 1998	0.00	2.05	1.17	1.18
^‡DW (km)	Distance to water (river) body	0.00	2.55	0.87	0.73
^♀SLP (degree)	Slope in degree	0.00	66.00	4.79	6.30
^♀ORI (degree)	Orientation from North in degree	0.00	180.00	76.46	59.00
^♀ALT (m)	Altitude in meters	902.00	1608.00	1160.81	73.91
^♯AGI_(85–98) (sheep/km²)	Average grazing intensity during 1985~1998	25.95	92.57	74.32	23.69
^♯AGI_(98–04) (sheep/km²)	Average grazing intensity during 1998~2004	79.28	170.12	120.69	18.88

(b) Dependent variable (vegetation succession) description


Case no.	Succession Type	Period	Description

1	SG to CS/AF	1985~1998	Vegetation succession from SG to CS/AF during 1985~1998
2	SG to CS/AF	1998~2004	Vegetation succession from SG to CS/AF during 1998~2004
3	LC to CS/AF	1985~1998	Vegetation succession from LC to CS/AF during 1985~1998
4	LC to CS/AF	1998~2004	Vegetation succession from LC to CS/AF during 1998~2004

Data extracted from ^†: Landsat imagery and the ground truthing is referred to Xie et al. [46] and Sha et al. [44]; ^♀: digital elevation model; ^‡: road network map, annual economic statistics of the local governments and Landsat imagery; ^♯: annual economic statistics of the local governments.