The Driving Mechanism and Spatio-Temporal Nonstationarity of Oasis Urban Green Landscape Pattern Changes in Urumqi

The green landscapes of oasis cities play an important role in maintaining ecological security. However, these ecosystems face increasing threats from desertification and fragmentation, driven by intensifying climate change and rapid urbanization. Understanding the characteristics and driving mechanisms behind changes in green landscape patterns is crucial for advancing sustainable urban green space management. This study explores the spatio-temporal changes in the green landscape pattern in Urumqi during 1990–2020 using a random forest classifier. This study also applies geographical detectors and geographically weighted regression to comprehensively determine the driving mechanism and spatio-temporal nonstationarity. The results are as follows: (1) The landscape types are primarily dominated by unused land, urban green spaces, and construction land, accounting for more than 80%. The areas of urban green spaces, water bodies, cropland, and unused land decreased by 0.38%, 37.41%, 0.57%, and 4.58%, respectively, from 1990 to 2020. With rapid urbanization, construction land exhibited a significant expansion trend, and the degree of fragmentation of urban green spaces increased spatially over these 30 years. (2) From 1990 to 2020, each landscape index exhibited fluctuating characteristics. Overall, the Shannon’s diversity and evenness indices of the urban green landscapes exhibited an increasing trend. The contagion and connectivity indices exhibited a decreasing trend, decreasing from 50.894 and 99.311 in 1990 to 46.584 and 99.048 in 2020, respectively. (3) During these 30 years, the dynamics of urban greenery were affected by a combination of natural and social factors, with elevation determining the overall urban green distribution pattern. Precipitation and temperature dominate the urban green space changes in the north and south of Urumqi. Socioeconomic factors such as GDP, population, river distance, and town distance regulate the urban green space changes in the central built-up area.