Evaluation of the eco-environmental frangibility in west Jilin Province based on the matter-element model

The west Jilin Province is a typical area in the ecotone between agriculture and animal husbandry, with a frangible eco-environment. With respect to the three aspects of water resource, natural disasters and land degradation, 10 indices were selected to establish a mat-ter-element model for the assessment of eco-envir-onmental frangibility in the west Jilin Province. The results indicate that during 1985-2000, Qian'an, Fuyu, and Changling had the least frangibility (level I), followed by Da'an and Qianguo (level II), and Taobei, Zhenlai, Taonan, and Tongyu had the highest frangibility (level III). On the whole, the counties in Songyuan city were less frangible than those in Baicheng city. Different counties had different frangibilities to environmental factors, e.g., Da'an and Tongyu were frangible in water resource con-ditions; Taobei, Zhenlai, Taonan, Tongyu and Qian'an suffered most from natural disasters; while Taobei, Taonan and Qianguo were threatened by severe land degradation.