Spatial and temporal distribution characteristics of sand-dust storms around Beijing Region
北京周边地区沙尘暴时空分布特征及其环境背景

In North China, an unprecedented heavy sand-stormy weather with high frequency took place in the spring of 2000. Dramatically, it brought direct damage to the region around Beijing, which has aroused even more extensive concern of personages of various circles. Sand-stormy weather research has been widely carried out since then. Therefore, in this paper, based on the climate data from 1951 to 1996 and eco-environmental data, employing climate statistics methods and geographic information sciences(GIS), the author took the land around Beijing as a case to study its characters of the temporal and spatial pattern in the past fifty years. The annual sand-dust storms day was selected as the major index to divide the region into four districts, then the environmental background was analyzed based on data extracted from the remote sensing images of the 1990s. This research demonstrated the spatial distribution and temporal change of sand-dust storms in this area, leading to the following conclusions: diurnally, afternoon(from 12 p.m.to 18 p.m.)was the period of sand-dust storms;seasonally spring and late summer were the sand-dust storms most easily happening periods;interannually,the 1950s to the 1960s witnessed the high value period of the sand-dust storms while the number of the sand-dust storm days tended to reduce in the 1970s and the 1980s but increased in the 1990s again. We also found that the most easily happening period corresponded to the dry and cold climate. As for the spatial distribution, the high value regions were located in the marginal areas of Otindag Sandy Land and Hobq Sandy Land, especially in Siziwangqi-Zhurihe, Erenhot-Damaoqi, Daladqi-Junggarqi-Uradqi.