Land Desertification Governance and Conservation Tillage

Author: Lu Ming
Publisher:
Publish Date: 2005-05-01
Features: In the field of desertification control, extensive field measurements across multiple sites and ecological types revealed the fundamental laws of wind-blown sand movement. It clarified that exposed farmland and degraded grasslands are the primary sources of sand in sandstorms, and highlighted that conservation tillage is a crucial approach to preventing sandstorms. This holds strategic significance for changing the "local treatment, overall deterioration" scenario in desertification control and the passive situation of poverty in sandy areas, promoting the benign transformation of China's ecological environment, protecting public health, and advancing sustainable agricultural development. In soil wind erosion research, field investigations and practical experiments further confirmed the severe condition of soil erosion and degradation in China. Particularly in arid and sandy regions, large amounts of nutrients are carried away by the wind, fertile soil is blown away in the sand, and the barren land becomes increasingly difficult to maintain, severely restricting local economic development and farmers' prosperity. Through long-term conservation tillage centered on straw mulching and minimum/no-till practices, a high-quality, high-yield, and regionally distinctive crop production technology system has been established. This provides important references for how to improve land productivity and address soil erosion and degradation. This book, in particular, presents new developments in the principles and techniques of conservation tillage. Through extensive empirical research, it proposes the principle of compensating for the positive and negative effects of conservation tillage, further confirming its comprehensive ecological benefits in soil and water conservation, nutrient retention, and soil ecosystem improvement under different ecological conditions, as well as its significant role in reducing costs and increasing economic output. On this basis, conservation tillage production technology models have been established for different regional types, including the agro-pastoral transitional zone in northwestern Hebei, the arid oasis belt in southern Xinjiang, the desertified areas in Inner Mongolia, the arid and semi-arid Hexi Corridor in Gansu, and the arid and sandy areas in northern Ningxia. This lays a solid foundation for establishing a Chinese characteristic conservation tillage technology system.