A method for choice of optimum scale on land use monitoring in Tarim River Basin

Optimal scale is one of the important issues in ecology and geography.Based on land-use data of the Tarim River Basin in Xinjiang of China in the 1950s,regarding the area of land use types as the parameter in scale selecting,the histograms of the patches in area are charted.Then,by reinforcing the normalized scale variances(NSV) with 3 landscape indi-ces,the scale characteristics of land use in the Tarim River Basin can be summarized.(1) NSV in the Tarim River up to a maximum at scale of 1:50,000 which is considered appropriate for the Tarim River.(2) Diversity indices of saline land are consistent with NSV’s.Diversity indices and NSV of sandy land showed that the appropriate scale is in the same scale domain.There is a significant difference between diversity indices and NSV of forestland and shrub-land.(3) Fractal dimension of sandy land and saline land showed a hierarchical structure at a scale of 1:10,000.Fractal dimension of forestland and shrubland are distributed under the same hierarchical structure in the region.