Integrated Assessment of Oases Maturity in Inland River Basins of China
中国内陆河流域绿洲发育度的综合评价

The artificial oases are the main places for human activities in arid zones. Oasis management and ecological construction embody the active action of human activities, while irrational land development and economic activities exert excessive pressure and form ecological load on the existence and sustainable development of oases. Scientifically and precisely giving an integrated evaluation on the states of oases is an important prerequisite for people to correctly understand oases and launch ecological construction and environmental protection projects. In view of the facts that the evaluation indicators of oases in China are simple and they are only used in limited regions at present, this paper presents an universal evaluation indicator system of oases in inland river basins based on the "oasis maturity" obtained by factor analytical method and with the 15 oases in Hexi Corridor as study objects conducts the case analyses. The results show that in accordance with the integrated evaluation values of the maturity, the oases in the Hexi Corridor can be divided into four classes, namely industrial oasis, highly developed agricultural oasis, moderately developed agricultural oasis and degraded or lowly developed agricultural oasis. Such a classification is entirely consistent with local situation. In addition, the advantages and disadvantages of various oasis are quantitatively expressed using the indicators of maturity at factorial level, and thus provide a concise and scientific basis for the oasis managers and policy-makers to manage oasis.