Reversing Land Degradation from Wind Erosion in Inner Mongolia: the Choice between Grass and Bush Restoration or Conservation Tillage of Contour Strip Plantings Depends on Hill Slopes and Rainfall

An Index Guiding Temporal Planting Policies for Wind Erosion Reduction

“…The Chinese government is encouraging farmers with incentives to return presently cultivated arable land (that by its conversion has become most prone to erosion) to grassland with shrubs or, where possible, woodland (e.g., Zheng et al, 2005). The above results show that planting annual pasture and forage crops instead of perennial pasture means that there is still no sufficient protection from wind erosion.…”

“…Vegetation cover is therefore an important estimator of the degree of water and soil conservation, particularly on sloping land (e.g., Stigter et al, 2005b), and increasing C t has been regarded as the main way to combat water erosion and restore ecosystems. This is applicable to the cold dry regions of the northern foot hills of the Yinshan Mountains, North China, where the present research was carried out (e.g., Zheng et al, 2005). It also applies to the wider region that has recently been called the Semiarid Agro Pastoral Interweaving Belt (SAPIB) in North China and the neighboring even more arid areas as well as to degrading and inappropriately converted grasslands in many parts of China (Sontag & Sun, 2002;Stigter et al, 2005a).…”