Soil Erosion, Conservation, and Eco‐environment Changes in the Loess Plateau of China

Abstract

As one of the best‐known areas in the world, the Loess Plateau, has long been suffering from serious soil erosion. The present paper reviewed the historical variation of climate, vegetation cover, and environment changes in order to understand the causes of severe soil erosion. Documentary evidence indicated that climate changes and vegetation cover were the dominant natural factors influencing the soil erosion rates during the Holocene. Intensive human activities consisting of warfare, population growth, deforestation, and soil and water conservation measures were responsible for the changes of soil erosion during the anthropogenic period. Spatial and temporal changes of specific sediment yields presented significant decrease within the last several decades, which resulted from decreasing rainfall, large scale soil and water conservation measures, agricultural irrigation, and reservoir construction. Different phase of soil conservation measures demonstrated the development of policies and techniques on soil erosion control. Effective strategies of soil and water conservation, consisting of terracing, afforestation, natural rehabilitation, and check‐dams construction, were carried out on the Loess Plateau during the past six decades. The progress of soil conservation measures confirmed that the check‐dams systems might be suitable for Loess hilly Plateau, and natural vegetation rehabilitation is the best way for soil erosion control and should be implemented in other regions with emphasis of improving the quality of conservation measures based on natural rehabilitation. Copyright © 2013 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

The immediate effectiveness of barley straw mulch in reducing soil erodibility and surface runoff generation in Mediterranean vineyards

“…According to Jordán et al (2011), mulch is any material, other than soil, placed or left on the soil surface for soil and water management purposes. Mulching involves maintaining a permanent or semi-permanent protective cover on the soil surface that can be composed of different materials such as vegetative residues, biological geotextiles, gravel and crushed stones (Cerdà, 2001;Gilley et al, 1986;Jordán et al, 2010;Mandal and Sharda, 2013;Smets et al, 2008;Xu et al, 2012;Zhao et al, 2013). The beneficial effects of mulching can be summarized as follows: i) increased water intake and storage (Cook et al, 2006;Mulumba and Lal, 2008), ii) protection of soil against raindrop impact, reducing erosion rates (Blavet et al, 2009;Jordán et al, 2010;Sadeghi et al, 2015a), iii) decreased sediment and nutrient concentrations in runoff (Cerdà, 1998;Gholami et al, 2013;Poesen and Lavee, 1991), iv) decreased runoff generation rates and surface flow velocity by increasing roughness (Cerdà, 2001;Jordán et al, 2010), v) improved infiltration capacity (Jordán et al, 2010;Wang et al, 2014), vi) increased activity of some species of earthworms and crop performance (Wooldridge and Harris, 1991), vii) enhanced soil physical conditions such as soil structure and organic content (De Silva and Cook, 2003;Jordán et al, 2010;Karami et al, 2012), viii) reduced topsoil temperature for more optimum germination and root development (Dahiya et al, 2007;Riddle et al, 1996) and decreased evaporation (Uson and Cook, 1995), and xix) enhanced interactions with nutrients (Campiglia et al, 2014;Movahedi Naeni and Cook, 2000).…”

Quantifying annual soil and nutrient lost by rill erosion in continuously used semiarid farmlands, North Ethiopia

“…These channels act as sediment sources and transport passages leading to soil loss (Wirtz et al 2012). Although soil erosion is a natural process, it has been accelerated by human impact on the landscape due to continuous agriculture activities, overgrazing, mining and others (Gimenez-Morera et al 2010;Leh et al 2013;Lieskovský and Kenderessy 2012;Mandal and Sharda 2013;Zhao et al 2013;Ziadat and Taimeh 2013). Tillage results in the permanent alteration of the soil structure and soil aggregate, leading to increased soil erosion (Ramos-Scharron and Macdonald 2007).…”

Vegetation in karst terrain of southwestern China allocates more biomass to roots

“…China has approximately 3.44 million km 2 of karst areas (buried, covered, and exposed carbonate rock areas), about 36 % of its total land and 15.6 % of all the 22 million km 2 karst areas in the world (Jiang et al, 2014). As a country with long-term human disturbances and highspeed economic development, China has suffered strong land use changes and serious land degradation in its entire territory (e.g., Zhang et al, 2007;Bai and Dent, 2009;Zhao et al, 2013). Desertification is therefore a very critical natural and social problem in the dry land and sand land of northern and western China (Ci and Yang, 2010).…”