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Bulletin of Chinese Academy of Sciences (Chinese Version)

Keywords

oasis-desert; salt; groundwater table; desert vegetation; symbiotic relationship

Abstract

Junggar Basin is a typical arid inland region in the northern temperate zone of the Earth. The surrounding high mountains form runoff, which flows into the basin and develops oasis. Oasis and desert are interdependent. Oasis needs to leach out its naturally accumulated salts through drainage. This drainage provides water and nutrients to desert vegetation. Desert vegetation, in turn, provides an ecological protection for oasis. Hence, oasis and desert have a symbiotic relationship. With excessive exploitation of land and water resources with water-saving technologies, salts cannot be leached out of the oasis region anymore. As a result, the groundwater level has also dropped sharply, which has inevitably threatened the vegetation in the periphery of oasis, and the oasisdesert symbiotic relationship is facing a fundamental crisis. Funded by "the Key Infrastructure Project for the Field Station Network of Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS)", Fukang Desert Ecosystem Observation and Experiment Station, CAS, built the "Experiment and Simulation Platform for Oasis-Desert Symbiotic Relationship", which consists of three sub platforms, namely:the sub-platform of soil salt accumulation and groundwater table simulation, the sub-platform of groundwater depth and vegetation relationship in the periphery of the desert, and the sub-platform of precipitation and vegetation relationship inside desert. The platform can meet the demands of the long-term studies of salt dynamics under different irrigation regimes in the oasis, the relationship between desert vegetation and groundwater level at the oasis edge, and the relationship between natural vegetation and precipitation change inside the desert. It provides an important infrastructure for studying and answering key scientific questions on the symbiotic relationship between oasis and desert ecosystems.

First page

1506

Last Page

1514

Language

Chinese

Publisher

Bulletin of Chinese Academy of Sciences

References

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