Process-based soil erosion simulation on a regional scale: The effect of ecological restoration in the Chinese loess plateau

Abstract

Land degradation caused by serious soil erosion has made the Loess Plateau one of the poorest regions in China. To improve the environmental conditions, the government has taken a number of measures of ecological restoration, including the Sloping Land Conversion Program (SLCP) since 1999. A natural question is whether these measures have improved the regional environmental conditions. The objective of this paper is to answer this question, focusing on the soil erosion dynamics in the Zuli River basin. We adopt a soil erosion model to simulate the changes of runoff and soil erosion induced by implementing the ecological restoration efforts, with the assistance of remote sensing and GIS technologies for parameterization of the land surface attributes. Our results show that the improved ground vegetative cover, especially in forestland and grassland, has reduced soil erosion by 38.8% from 1998 to 2006. At the same time, however, the changed rainfall pattern has resulted in a 13.1% increase in soil erosion. Thus the net reduction in soil erosion was 25.7%. This suggests that China's various ecological restoration efforts have been effective in reducing soil loss on a regional scale. © 2009 Springer Science+Business Media B.V.