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Grassland degradation has become a serious environmental problem in China due to climate variability and human disturbances in the and and semi-arid areas. Establishing grassland protection areas (GPAs) is regarded as an effective measure to protect grassland. This paper presents a new method to support the local government’s effort in zoning of GPAs. It integrates a cellular automata (CA) model with geographical information system (GIS) and remote sensing. The proposed method includes two major steps: 1. to extract "seed points" of candidate GPAs using remote sensing techniques and GIS; 2. to simulate the zoning of GPAs using a CA model. The performance of the proposed method is evaluated using a case study in Xilingol steppe grassland in Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region of China. The results show that the integrated approach can rapidly find candidate GPAs that satisfy the zoning requirement. It has demonstrated that the proposed method of grassland protection zoning provides valuable decision support tools for government and planning agencies. (c) 2005 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.