Yield and animalfeed balance of typical grassland in Xinjiang Fukang using 3S techniques

The objective of this study is to calculate the grassland aboveground biomass (GAB) of Xinjiang Fukang in 1990, 1999 and 2008, using remote sensing images, meteorological data, the Yearbook, previous findings and classification results, the animalfeed balance and the number of animals were analyzed respectively. The results showed that, 1) in recent 20 years, the total area and aboveground biomass of pasture decreased consistently, the aboveground biomass in 2008 reduced by 4.66% compared to 1990; 2) the number of livestock continued to increase from 1990 to 2008, meanwhile total available forage reserves was 3.77105t, 3.64105t, 3.63105t respectively. The animalfeed balance was as follows: the grassland underrun was 29.6% in 1990, 4.91% in 2008, the overloaded was about 9.67% in 1999. Combined with the classification images, climate change and the amount of livestock, it was concluded that from 1990 to 2008, agriculture reclamation occupying grassland led to a reduction of GAB, meanwhile the amount of livestock increased yearly, which induced the pressure of carrying capacity per unit grassland. This situation changed after the implementation of the grazing forbidden project in 2005. In order to develop grassland ecosystem and livestock successfully, attention should be pay to increase the intensity of realtime monitoring of grassland productivity and manage pastoral production.