Benefit assessment on soil and water conservation and ecological restoration on the Loess Plateau of China

the loess plateau is the most serious area for soil erosion erosion and water loss in the world, and is the key area for ecological restoration in china. A series of projects, including the small watershed management project, grain for green project and the slope farmland regulation project has been carried out in this area since 1980s. soil erosion and water loss was under controlled and the ecosystem was restored gradually due to those projects. in order to evaluate the ecological benefit benefit for those projects, the chang of land use and vegetation cover, soil erosion, runoff, sediment transport amounts and social economic structure were analyzed in different processes in field stations. the results showed the ecological environment was improved significantly from 1982 to 2013, average NDVI increased from 0.30 to 0.45 reducing the area and intensity of soil erosion and water loss, the annual sediment transport was reduced about 85% in the yellow river in last 15 years, of which vegetaton restoration made the contribution of 34.9% sediment wallop dam had the contribution of 22.1% the changes of rainfall had the effect of 22.1% . dural the restoration process, the social and economic also developed siginficantly. on the other hand, serious loss of soil and water still occurred at some plots or areas, the annual erosion rate is till of 4-5 times over allowable value and thers is still a long way to continue conduct the ecosystem restoration and management. the strategy were suggested including ecological building, discipline construction, policy managemtnt and industrial structure adjustment for the incoming ecological projects.

Benefit assessment on soil and water conservation and ecological restoration on the Loess Plateau of China Keywords:

loess plateau , soil and water conservation , ecological restoration , ecological benefit