Choosing an optimal land-use pattern for restoring eco-environments in a semiarid region of the Chinese Loess Plateau

作者：Yunqiang Wang, Mingan Shao, Chencheng Zhang, Xiangwei Han, Tianxu Mao, Xiaoxu Jia · 发表于：Ecological Engineering · 年份：2014 · DOI：10.1016/j.ecoleng.2014.10.001 · 被引用次数：100 · 研究领域：Soil erosion and sediment transport、Soil and Unsaturated Flow、Soil Moisture and Remote Sensing

The natural environments in the semiarid regions of the Chinese Loess Plateau (CLP) are fragile due to the serious soil erosion and the weak ecological services of the plants. To ascertain and then evaluate a sustainable land-use pattern in these regions, we selected six typical land-use patterns (i.e., a farmland, a natural grassland, a homogeneous shrubland (S), a mix of shrubland and cultivated grassland (S–Alf), a mix of shrubland and orchard (S–O) and a mix of shrubland and grassland (S–G)) on the plateau and then measured the soil water, related soil properties and plant root indices to a depth of 1800 cm. We also measured the aboveground net primary productivities (ANPPs). The mean soil water content (SWC) within the 0–1800 cm profile was significantly highest (15.2%) in farmland, followed by grassland (11.4%) and S–Alf (8.0%). The available water (AW), the ratio between AW and AW capacity, and the thickness of the dried soil layers also demonstrated that farmland had the best conditions of soil water, followed by grassland and shrubland. The aboveground biomasses of grassland in both non-growing (140 g m−2) and growing (370 g m−2) seasons were significantly higher than those of shrublands. The ANPPs of the grassland (2.0 g m−2 d−1) demonstrated a similar trend. The patterns of land use (including the mixtures of different plant species) greatly affected the patterns of vertical distribution and quantities of soil water within the 1800-cm profile. The data for the soil...