Environmental suitability evaluation for human settlements in Bosten Lake Basin

Abstract

Environmental Suitability of Human Settlement in arid and semi-arid area is defined as an efficient eco-geographical landscape that has dense vegetation or stable water and comfortable climate condition which is applied to arid region's human living environment. In this work, the ESHS in the Bosten Lake Basin were evaluated based on remote sensing images, socioeconomic data, grid data and annual average climate temperature data. The results revealed that the index of ESHS in the Bosten Lake Basin ranges from 12.8 to 86.73. The proportion of high suitability area, middle suitable area, low suitable area and not suitable area accounts for 9.7%, 9.6%, 41.4%, and 39.3% respectively of the total study area. Our results indicated that natural environment of Bosten Lake is rather fragile, the mountainous area in northwest and desert area in southeast is basically do not fit for human settlement. Suitable regions for human settlement were mainly distributed around Bosten Lake in the form of batches, while others are scattered.