Vulnerability of glacier change in Chinese Tianshan Mountains

Glacier is a crucial freshwater resource for populations and socio-economies in arid and semiarid regions, and the vulnerability of glacier change is an issue concerning regional ecological services and sustainable socio-economic development. We took Chinese Tianshan Mountains as an example and constructed a basic framework of the vulnerability of glacier change covering factors such as physical geography, population status, socio-economic level, agricultural development and social services based on exposure, sensitivity and adaptability, and constituted a targeted evaluation index system accordingly. We examined the spatial structure and spatial autocorrelation of the vulnerability on glacier change using ArcGIS and GeoDa softwares. We discussed the influence and interaction of natural conditions, socio-economy, population and other factors on glacier change adaptability using the GeoDetector model. Our results suggest that: (1) The vulnerability level decreased from west to east with significant differences. The eastern part of Chinese Tianshan Mountains has the lowest vulnerability, followed by the central part, and the western part has the highest value. (2) There is a significant positive correlation between exposure and sensitivity and a significant negative correlation between exposure and adaptability, indicating that the areas with high exposure and high sensitivity to glacier changes tend to have low adaptive capacity, which leads to higher vulnerability; on the contrary, the vulnerability is low. (3) The spatial heterogeneity of the ability to cope with glacier change in the Tianshan Mountains is the result of the combined effects of natural, social, economic and demographic factors. Among them, factors such as the production value of secondary and tertiary industries, urban population, urban fixed-asset investment and employees at the end of the year play a leading role. © 2021, Science Press. All right reserved.