Recognizing the Relationship between Spatial Patterns in Water Quality and Land-Use/Cover Types: A Case Study of the Jinghe Oasis in Xinjiang, China

To understand the relationship between spatial water quality patterns and changes in land-use/cover types in the Jinghe Oasis, 47 water sampling sites measured in May and October 2015 were divided into six cluster layers using the self-organizing map method, which is based on non-hierarchical k-means classification. The water quality indices included the chemical oxygen demand (COD), biological oxygen demand (BOD), suspended solids (SS), total phosphorus (TP), total nitrogen (TN), ammonia nitrogen (NH3-N), chromaticity (SD), and turbidity (NUT). Data was also collected on the changes in the farmland, forest-grassland, water body, salinized land, and other land types during the wet and dry seasons. Then, we combined these data with the classification results of the GF-1 remote sensing satellite data obtained in May and October 2015 and analyzed the influences of land-use/cover type on water quality for different layers and seasons. The results indicate that Clusters 1 to 3 included monitoring samples from the wet season (May 2015), whereas Clusters 4 to 6 included monitoring samples from the dry season (October 2015). In general, the COD, SS, NUT, TN, and NH3-N values were high around the Ganjia Lake Haloxylon natural conservation area in the southern Ebinur Lake region, east of Ebinur Lake, and around the Kuitun River during the wet season. The SD values around these areas were high. Moreover, high BOD and TP values were mainly concentrated around the Ganjia Lake Haloxylon natural conservation area, as well as the Kuitun River, during the dry season. In the discussion on the relationship between the different water quality parameters and land-use/cover type changes, we determined that farmland, forest-grassland, and salinized land significantly influenced the water quality parameters in the Jinghe Oasis. In addition, the influences of various land-use/cover types on the water quality parameters in the research zone during the different seasons exhibited the following descending order of magnitude: farmland forest-grassland salinized land water body others. Moreover, their influences were lower during the wet season than the dry season. In conclusion, developing research on the relationship between the spatial framework of the water quality in the Jinghe Oasis and land-use/cover type changes is significant for the time sequence distribution of water quality in arid regions from both theoretical and practical perspectives.