GISbased classification of seasonal pasture in Qinghai province

Seasonal factors have significant influence on the production of grassland livestock industry in Qinghai Province. Accurate understanding of seasonal utilization of grassland is of great importance for the scientific reasonable macromanagement of livestock production. Natural factors played a key role in the seasonal utilization of grassland. However, there are increasing impacts from human activity in recent years. In this study the method to classify seasonal pastures was revised using the GIS technology with two factors including elevation and human population. With this method, the models of 8 regions of Qinghai province were constructed, and the accuracies and scales of the model map were adjusted, respectively. Finally, the accuracies of the map were 66.65%. This can reflect the real situation of utilization of seasonal pastures. The percentages of two seasonal grasslands were consistent with the percentage of traditional distribution.