Abstract:
Abstract: Most of the pastoral areas in China are located in arid and semi-arid regions, where water resources are short, water and land resources are not matched, and forage and livestock conditions are not balanced. In consequence grassland degradation and serious desertification have been induced. Overgrazing and agricultural development are the main man-induced factors for ecological system degradation in pastoral areas. With the development of research, alleviating ecological degradation has been evolved gradually from achieving the balance between forage and livestock to achieving the balance among water, land, forage, and livestock. Therefore, the water-land-forage-livestock balance regulation is the key to solve this problem. In this paper, the existing researches on the adaptation of water-land-forage-stock balance regulation in pastoral areas have been analyzed. Under this premise, converting the value of grassland ecological services into acceptable grassland ecological benefits is incorporated into the regulation of water-land-forage-livestock balance in pastoral areas. And the water- land- forage- livestock balance regulation model with uniform measure of economic benefits and ecological benefits have also been built. The regulation model was constructed by the multi-objective programming method. The genetic algorithm (GA) which evaluates individual fitness based on target sorting matrix was used to solve the model, and FORTRAN language was used for programming and data processing. The calculation program is developed as a new method and thought for the quantitative study of the water-land-forage-livestock balance regulation threshold. Taking Etuokeqian banner as an example, a set of control schemes for irrigating artificial grassland and natural grassland coupling ratio during livestock rearing have been established. Based on this, the relationship between development of water and land resources and its response in economic and ecological benefits under different schemes have been analyzed. The results showed that the area of irrigated artificial grassland was increased with the increase of livestock feeding time, and the limiting factor of regional development gradually shifted from the natural grassland to the limitation of water resources. The study area has rich land resources. Thus, water resources are the key factors in controlling the balanced development of the regional water-land-forage-livestock. By 2020, there will be 4 main indicators of water-land-forage-livestock balanced control threshold in Etuokeqian Banner. The development and utilization of water resources should be controlled at 1.66 hundred million m3, the irrigated area should be controlled at 3.28 to 3.38 ten thousand hm2, the development scale of irrigated artificial grassland should be controlled between 2.16 to 2.51 ten thousand hm2, and the amount of livestock keeping should be controlled in 89.43 to 100.46 ten thousand sheep units. By 2030, the development and utilization of water resources should be controlled at 2.66 hundred million m3, the irrigated area should be controlled at 4.24 to 4.31 ten thousand hm2. The development scale of irrigated artificial grassland should be controlled between 3.04 to 3.42 ten thousand hm2, and the amount of livestock keeping should be controlled in 113.54 to 118.85 ten thousand sheep units.