Along with the global climate change, gully erosion, flood and drought jointly restrict the sustainable development of arid rangeland in Central Asia. Rainwater harvesting (RWH) system in gully is a flexible practice that alleviate complex environmental problems. In the Kulusitai watershed of Xinjiang, China, our study presented a decision-making system using GIS combined with multi-criteria analysis and a field survey to identify suitability of gully for RWH. The results showed that nearly 40% of rangeland belonged to high runoff potential area, and gullies as the runoff collection channel became the potential site of RWH. The selection of RWH systems depended on catchment environment and gully characteristics. Therefore, based on the unique natural conditions of Xinjiang and successful RWH cases in other regions, we discussed some suitable low-cost RWH techniques to restore degraded grassland and promote community development. Our study will provide some suggestions for ecological restoration and pasture management in arid regions of Central Asia.

Taking environmental factors for road water damage as research object, the multi-attribute decision-making method was adopted to build the factor system of fragility evaluation, including 6 environmental factors: terrain, land surface slope, geomorphic type, drainage density, geological disaster development along road and vegetation cover. Combined with ArcGIS, five fragility grades were divided as slight fragility, low fragility, middle fragility, high fragility and extreme fragility, and the spatial distribution of fragility grades corresponding to each environmental factor was drawn. Delphi method was used to analyze and to assign values to six environmental factors. Analytic Hierarchy Process and expert opinion correction method were used to determine the weight of each environmental factor. Based on the multi-factor comprehensive index method, the fragility zoning calculation model was constructed and the environment of road water damage was classified and zoned according to the calculated threshold. The research results are consistent with the actual situation, which provides important scientific basis and practical significance for road disaster prevention and mitigation.