Abstract: It is one of theoretical fundament to identify landscape stability and maintaining mechanism in landscape ecology research. Due to restriction of anthropogenic activities disturbance, patch natural attributes and natural resource support, it is a focus area in desert-oasis ecotone of arid zone to study landscape stability. To best understand landscape stability in different scales, we selected landscape indices such as mean patch area (MAP), patch density (PD), large patch index (LPI) and Eucidean nearest-neighbor distance (ENN) to evaluate the stability by employing Coefficient of Variance (CV) and Stability Index. Results showed that there was obviously difference to landscape stability assessed by CV analysis for four landscape indicators that indicate and the stability values were in turn ENN, MPA, PD, and LPI both of landscape and patch class level. However, the stability index was higher in landscape level than in patch class level for all selected indices. In terms of temporal scale dependence for the stability, significant F check of linear trend analysis indicated that sandy desert (P<0.001) and gravel desert area (P<0.001) were higher than landscape level (P=0.003). In terms of landscape maintaining mechanism, Pearson Correlation Analysis illustrated that oasisization and underground water table were main factor to impact on landscape stability that induced by anthropogenic activities disturbance (two tailed significant check both of P<0.01), and desertification (two tailed significant check P<0.01) and neighbor patches natural attribute were secondary factor.

Key words: landscape index, coefficient of variance, stability index, desert-oasis ecotone, Heihe middle reaches