Degraded Ecosystem and its Rehabilitating Measures in Sandy Areas of North China

Ecosystem degradation occurs in parallel with desertification process in sandy areas of North China. The vast sandy areas in North China are characterized with flexible environments and fragile ecosystems as well as intensive human activities. Due to the annual precipitation gradient decreases from east to west in North China, the whole sandy region falls into 3 main climatic zones: arid, semi-arid and dry sub-humid zones.The ecosystems in each type of climatic zones are different in climatic conditions, human activities, cultural dimensions, vegetation covers, landscapes, and causes and processes of ecosystem degradation. Therefore, the most effective rehabilitation measures of degraded ecosystems in different types of the climatic zones are also different. For the arid sandy areas, vegetation rehabilitation of degraded ecosystems needs to be completely closed, assisting with artificial measures, such as plantation, irrigation or others. For semi-arid sandy areas, the effective measures of vegetation re

Degraded Ecosystem and its Rehabilitating Measures in Sandy Areas of North China

Ecosystem degradation occurs in parallel with desertification process in sandy areas of North China. The vast sandy areas in North China are characterized with flexible environments and fragile ecosystems as well as intensive human activities. Due to the annual precipitation gradient decreases from east to west in North China, the whole sandy region falls into 3 main climatic zones: arid, semi-arid and dry sub-humid zones.The ecosystems in each type of climatic zones are different in climatic conditions, human activities, cultural dimensions, vegetation covers, landscapes, and causes and processes of ecosystem degradation. Therefore, the most effective rehabilitation measures of degraded ecosystems in different types of the climatic zones are also different. For the arid sandy areas, vegetation rehabilitation of degraded ecosystems needs to be completely closed, assisting with artificial measures, such as plantation, irrigation or others. For semi-arid sandy areas, the effective measures of vegetation rehabilitation of degraded ecosystems include increasing of proportion of forests and rangelands and limitation of reclamation; reducing the carrying capacity of livestock on unit area of rangelands and growth of fodder plants; and plantation on the lowlands between sand dunes. For the dry sub-humid areas, the most effective measure is enclosure of degraded ecosystems combined with plantation, and in some cases, just stop uses by grazing or reclamation.