The Xilin River () of

Inner Mongolia Inner Mongolia, officially the Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region, is an autonomous region of the People's Republic of China. Its border includes most of the length of China's border with the country of Mongolia. Inner Mongolia also accounts for a ...

China China, officially the People's Republic of China (PRC), is a country in East Asia. It is the world's most populous country, with a population exceeding 1.4 billion, slightly ahead of India. China spans the equivalent of five time zones and ...

, is located in the middle latitudes. A study of the land cover types recognized 17 sub-classes in the Xilin River Basin including nine types of

steppe In physical geography, a steppe () is an ecoregion characterized by grassland plains without trees apart from those near rivers and lakes. Steppe biomes may include: * the montane grasslands and shrublands biome * the temperate grasslands, ...

habitat based on the dominant grasses in different areas and eight non-grassland habitats including current cropland, harvested cropland, urban areas,

wetland A wetland is a distinct ecosystem that is flooded or saturated by water, either permanently (for years or decades) or seasonally (for weeks or months). Flooding results in oxygen-free (anoxic) processes prevailing, especially in the soils. The ...

s, desertified land, saline and alkaline land, water bodies and lands which could not be classified because of cloud cover in satellite images.Chen Siqing, Liu Jiyuan, Zhuang Dafang and Xiao Xiangming. 2003. Characterization of land cover types in Xilin River Basin using multi-temporal Landsat images. Journal of Geographical Sciences 13(2):131-138, .C. Tonga, J. Wub,c,*, S. Yonga, J. Yangd, W. Yonga. In press. A landscape-scale assessment of steppe degradation in the Xilin River Basin, Inner Mongolia, China. Journal of Arid Environments: in press

Geography

The east side of the Xilin River Basin is lined with 1500 m tall mountains and hills and to the west are the Daxing-An Mountains with the elevation along the River decreasing from southeast to northeast (902 m). The landscape of the basin is covered by lava tablelands, low mountains, hills, plateaus, and sandy lands. Diverse plant communities cover this area of steppes. Animal husbandry is important to the local economy. ''Stipa grandis'' steppe and ''Leymus chinensis'' steppe are dominant/climax plant habitats in the basin.

Climate

The temperate steppe of the Xilin River Basin has an average annual precipitation of 350mm. The average annual temperature is 1.7 °C at Xilinhao. July, the hottest month, averages 20.8 °C. January is the coldest with the lowest monthly temperature averaging -19.8 °C. From southeast to northeast, the temperatures and frost-free period increases while precipitation decreases gradually.

Cities along the river

Xilinhot Xilinhot ( Mongolian: , , ; ) is a county-level city which serves as the seat of government for the Xilin Gol league in Inner Mongolia, People's Republic of China. It has a jurisdiction area of and a population of 245,886; 149,000 people live in ...

lines along the middle of the Xilin River. Xier and Baiinxile are upstream from Xilinhot.

Current conditions

Grassland degradation Grassland degradation, also called vegetation or steppe degradation, is a biotic disturbance in which grass struggles to grow or can no longer exist on a piece of land due to causes such as overgrazing, burrowing of small mammals, and climate ...

and

desertification Desertification is a type of land degradation in drylands in which biological productivity is lost due to natural processes or induced by human activities whereby fertile areas become increasingly arid. It is the spread of arid areas caused by ...

have increased because of

overgrazing Overgrazing occurs when plants are exposed to intensive grazing for extended periods of time, or without sufficient recovery periods. It can be caused by either livestock in poorly managed agricultural applications, game reserves, or nature res ...

and inappropriate crop cultivation, which is a result of the growing human population and overgrazing has introduced new successional communities to the ecosystem, although efforts to study and improve the situation are ongoing.Gu XH, He CY, Pan YZ, Li XB, Zhu WQ, Zhu XF. 2007. Optimizing management on degraded grassland in Xilin River Basin based on ecological risk assessment rticle in Chinese with English abstract 应用生态学报 nglish journal title is referred to as The Journal of Applied Ecology or The Chinese Journal of Applied Ecology 18(5):968-76Yuan F, Han XG, Ge JP, Wu JG. 2008. Net primary productivity of Leymus chinensis steppe in Xilin River basin of Inner Mongolia and its responses to global climate change. rticle in Chinese with English abstract 应用生态学报 nglish journal title is referred to as The Journal of Applied Ecology or The Chinese Journal of Applied Ecology 19(10):2168-76

References

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