Spatio-temporal change of grassland distribution in central Inner Mongolia in China

Grassland is one of most important ecosystems in northern China and is threatened by strong land use pressure and poor protection. We selected central Inner Mongolia as a study area to explore spatio-temporal change of grassland distribution in the north of China. Obtaining land use data from remote sensing maps, we classified it into six types: forest, grassland, wetland, farmland, artificial surface and others. Then grassland was assigned into four secondary categories: meadow, steppe, tussock and herbaceous greenbelt. On the base of RS and GIS, we made an analysis of grassland distribution from 2000 to 2010. Result shows: 1) during this period, distribution of grassland decreased 1472.68km(2), accounting for 0.45%; 2) steppes took up the biggest percentage of total area, which experienced lighter decline compared with herbaceous greenbelts; 3) differing from the total trend, tussock suffered little degradation while meadows expended to some degree.