Future land use and food security scenarios for the Guyuan district of remote western China

Abstract

© iForest -Biogeosciences and Forestry Introduction"Land use" is understood to mean human activities that exhibit a spatial dimension and that change the bio-geophysical conditions of land and the associated environment (Helming et al. 2008). Land use is a key factor that determines a landscape's performance with respect to socioeconomic functions such as land-based production, infrastructure, and housing (Mander et al. 2007). Significant changes in land use and land management have taken place in China since 1978, and one of the most important drivers of these changes has been human intervention through the implementation of land-use policies. One particularly dramatic example is the Sloping Land Conversion Program (SLCP), the initial phase of China's Grain for Green program, which was initiated in 1999 by the State Council (1998) and which was fully implemented in 2000. Excessive reclamation of land for agriculture in environmentally fragile frontier regions had led to a series of natural disasters (Lin & Samuel 2003). For instance, severe flooding in areas surrounding the Yangtze River in 1998 caused an economic loss of respectively 13.5 billion RMB (renminbi) in Shandong Province and 156.8 billion RMB (US$ 19.6 billion) overall, and at least 1526 people died (Zhang & Yang 1998, Li 1999, Jiang & Shi 2003. In response, the Chinese government realized that it had become necessary to take immediate action to alleviate these water-related problems and the related soil erosion that occurred in agricultural land on steep slopes (Xu & Cao 2001). Based on their experience with the pilot program, the government recognized that far more marginal agricultural land should be retired from agricultural use and revegetated using either trees or grassland vegetation (Du 2001). Therefore, the original program evolved into a more widespread program to combat soil erosion, alleviate the deterioration of natural ecosystems, safeguard water resources, and promote sustainable development in rural China .The goal of the SLCP is to convert agricultural land on steep slopes or heavily degraded land into forest or grassland (Ramankutty et al. 2002, Feng et al. 2005, and to restore degraded forest and grassland; the ultimate goal is to prevent soil erosion by reducing the area of exposed soil. The steepness of the slope (15° or above) is one of the main criteria for the selection of farmlands to be converted into forest or grassland. The SLCP stipulates that farmers who convert degraded farmland on steep slopes into either grassland or "ecological forests" (orchards or plantations of trees with medical value, and timber-producing forests that will not be harvested because of their role in protecting slopes) will be compensated with: (1) an annual in-kind subsidy of grain to compensate them for their lost crops; (2) a cash subsidy; and (3) free seedlings and grass seed for use in revegetation at the beginning of the planting period. To account for differences in regional average yields, the grain subsidy was set at 2250 kg ha -1 in the ...

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