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In the context of global warming and the increasing water shortage in dry areas, it is necessary to find a sustainable pathway for utilization of land resources (ULR) to solve these problems. For this purpose, using socioeconomic and environmental indicators from 2006 to 2018 and taking the Tarim Basin, China as an example, this study employed an integrated approach composed of the indicator evaluation system (IES) and the System Dynamics (SD) model to evaluate the possibility of sustainable ULR in the basin. During the simulation, three scenarios namely traditional development (TD), economic priority (EP) and harmonious development (HD) were designed, and different thresholds were set for each indicator of potential ULR in each sub-region to predict their future development status. The IES was established to derive the sustainable utilization degree (SUD) of ULR. The results show that the SUD in Tarim in 2030 is likely be 0.60 (TD), 0.62 (EP) and 0.68 (HD), indicating that only in HD scenario is it possible to find pathway to solve water scarcity problem and achieve sustainable ULR. This study provides a supportive idea for decision-making on sustainable ULR in Tarim and also an approach for similar sustainability assessment in other dry areas. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper presents an integrated study on the effects of human activity, climate change and crustal movement on the changes of the middle reaches of the Tarim River in China. Remote sensing images and rainfall data from 38 stations from 1970 to 2021 were used for the research. The precise point positioning (PPP) approach was applied to ascertain the crustal movement of the study area using 256 Global Positioning System (GPS) station data of the recent 20 years. The results show that in the past 50 years the studied reaches of the river has moved north at maximum 2940 m or 57.9 m on average, and human activity may have played a dominant role in this change though extreme events of climate may have also taken a part in it. However, before the Anthropocene, its northeast migration is likely associated with crustal movement as the basin bottom inclines to northeast. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]