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Abstract
The Inner Mongolian steppe is a vast grassland ecosystem that has long been home to nomadic pastoralists. However, this steppe is experiencing grassland degradation as well as more frequent sand storms. The objective of this study was to detect land-cover changes in the Wulagai grassland of Inner Mongolia using multi-temporal Landsat images from 1986 to 2014, and to determine the factors driving these changes and their impacts. Land-cover maps for 1986, 1995, 2000, 2006 and 2014 were produced using the Support Vector Machine method. Subsequently, 300 m × 300 m grid-cell vector map which covered Wulagai grassland was made to detect land-cover changes and correlations between land-cover classes. The results show degradation trend from 1986 to 2014. Grid-cell-based spatial correlation analysis confirmed a strong negative correlation between grassland and barren, indicating that grassland degradation in this region is due to the regional modernization over the past 28 years.