Remote Sensing Identification of Major Crops and Trade-Off of Water and Land Utilization of Oasis in Altay Prefecture

Gaowei Yan, Luguang Jiang () and Ye Liu
Additional contact information
Gaowei Yan: Institute of Geographic Sciences and Natural Resources Research, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing 100101, China
Luguang Jiang: Institute of Geographic Sciences and Natural Resources Research, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing 100101, China
Ye Liu: Institute of Geographic Sciences and Natural Resources Research, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing 100101, China

Land, 2025, vol. 14, issue 7, 1-28

Abstract: The Altay oasis, located at the heart of the transnational ecological conservation zone shared by China, Kazakhstan, Russia, and Mongolia, is a region with tremendous potential for water resource utilization. However, with the continued expansion of agriculture, its ecological vulnerability has become increasingly pronounced. Within this fragile balance lies a critical opportunity: efficient water resource management could pave the way for sustainable development across the entire arid oasis regions. This study uses a decision tree model based on a feature threshold to map the spatial distribution of major crops in the Altay Prefecture oasis, assess their water requirements, and identify the coupling relationships between agricultural water and land resources. Furthermore, it proposed optimization planting structure strategies under three scenarios: water-saving irrigation, cash crop orientation, and forage crop orientation. In 2023, the total planting area of major crops in Altay Prefecture was 3368 km 2 , including spring wheat, spring maize, sunflower, and alfalfa, which consumed 2.68 × 10 9 m 3 of water. Although this area accounted for only 2.85% of the land, it consumed 26.23% of regional water resources, with agricultural water use comprising as much as 82.5% of total consumption, highlighting inefficient agricultural water use as a critical barrier to sustainable agricultural development. Micro-irrigation technologies demonstrate significant water-saving potential. The adoption of such technologies could reduce water consumption by 14.5%, thereby significantly enhancing agricultural water-use efficiency. Cropping structure optimization analysis indicates that sunflower-based planting patterns offer notable water-saving benefits. Increasing the area of sunflower cultivation by one unit can unlock a water-saving potential of 25.91%. Forage crop combinations excluding soybean can increase livestock production by 30.2% under the same level of water consumption, demonstrating their superior effectiveness for livestock system expansion. This study provides valuable insights for achieving sustainable agricultural development in arid regions under different development scenarios.

Keywords: crop identification; Sentinel-2; water and land balance; scenario simulation; Altay Prefecture (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: Q15 Q2 Q24 Q28 Q5 R14 R52 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2025
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.mdpi.com/2073-445X/14/7/1426/pdf (application/pdf)
https://www.mdpi.com/2073-445X/14/7/1426/ (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:gam:jlands:v:14:y:2025:i:7:p:1426-:d:1696552

Access Statistics for this article

Land is currently edited by Ms. Carol Ma

More articles in Land from MDPI
Bibliographic data for series maintained by MDPI Indexing Manager ().