IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/gam/jsusta/v6y2014i8p4795-4806d38628.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Farmers’ Sustainable Strategies for Soil Conservation on Sloping Arable Lands in the Upper Yangtze River Basin, China

Author

Listed:
  • Qiang Tang

    (Key Laboratory of Mountain Surface Processes and Ecological Regulation, Institute of Mountain Hazards and Environment, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Chengdu 610041, China
    State Key Laboratory of Urban and Regional Ecology, Research Center for Eco-environment Sciences, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing 100085, China)

  • Chansheng He

    (Key Laboratory of Western China's Environmental Systems, Lanzhou University, Lanzhou 730000, China
    Department of Geography, Western Michigan University, Kalamazoo, MI 49008, USA)

  • Xiubin He

    (Key Laboratory of Mountain Surface Processes and Ecological Regulation, Institute of Mountain Hazards and Environment, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Chengdu 610041, China)

  • Yuhai Bao

    (Key Laboratory of Mountain Surface Processes and Ecological Regulation, Institute of Mountain Hazards and Environment, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Chengdu 610041, China)

  • Ronghua Zhong

    (Key Laboratory of Mountain Surface Processes and Ecological Regulation, Institute of Mountain Hazards and Environment, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Chengdu 610041, China
    University of Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing 100049, China)

  • Anbang Wen

    (Key Laboratory of Mountain Surface Processes and Ecological Regulation, Institute of Mountain Hazards and Environment, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Chengdu 610041, China)

Abstract

The Upper Yangtze River Basin comprises a densely-populated agricultural region with mountainous and hilly landforms. Intensive cultivation has been extended onto steep hillslopes, which constitute the principal source area for sediment production. Soil conservation on sloping arable lands is thus of utmost priority for persisting sustainable agricultural production and maintaining sound ecosystem services. Although there have been many soil conservation techniques, either promoted by the government or adopted by local farmers, the practiced area was very limited relative to the total area affected by soil erosion. This paper attempts to introduce four popular soil conservation measures on sloping arable lands in this region to enhance a broader scale of implementation, including hedgerow buffers, level trenches, sloping terraces and limited downslope tillage. These practices, although developed from local farmers’ indigenous knowledge for productive purposes, have well conformed to our contemporary understanding of soil erosion processes on sloping landscape affected by human disturbances, were of sound suitability to regional manual tillage agriculture and more trade-off-efficient on rill prevention, runoff harvest and nutrient management.

Suggested Citation

  • Qiang Tang & Chansheng He & Xiubin He & Yuhai Bao & Ronghua Zhong & Anbang Wen, 2014. "Farmers’ Sustainable Strategies for Soil Conservation on Sloping Arable Lands in the Upper Yangtze River Basin, China," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 6(8), pages 1-12, July.
    • Handle: RePEc:gam:jsusta:v:6:y:2014:i:8:p:4795-4806:d:38628
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://www.mdpi.com/2071-1050/6/8/4795/pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://www.mdpi.com/2071-1050/6/8/4795/
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Chung-I Wu & Suhua Shi & Ya-ping Zhang, 2004. "A case for conservation," Nature, Nature, vol. 428(6979), pages 213-214, March.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Trung Thanh Nguyen & Siegfried Bauer & Ulrike Grote, 2016. "Does Land Tenure Security Promote Manure Use by Farm Households in Vietnam?," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 8(2), pages 1-19, February.
    2. Nikola Tričković & Vukašin Rončević & Nikola Živanović & Tara Grujić & Luka Stefanović & Nikola Jovanović & Miodrag Zlatić, 2023. "Ecological and Economic Effects of Applying the Future Agricultural Production Structure Model (FAPSMS): The Case Study of the Barička River Basin," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 15(10), pages 1-17, May.
    3. Dan Wu & Changxin Zou & Wei Cao & Lulu Liu, 2018. "Analysis of the Ecosystem Soil Conservation Function Based on the Major Function-Oriented Zones across the Yangtze River Economic Belt, China," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 10(10), pages 1-15, September.
    4. Zhengsong Lin & Xinyue Ye & Qian Wei & Fan Xin & Zhang Lu & Sonali Kudva & Qiwen Dai, 2017. "Ecosystem Services Value Assessment and Uneven Development of the Qingjiang River Basin in China," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 9(12), pages 1-17, December.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. repec:gat:wpaper:1509 is not listed on IDEAS
    2. Haiming Yan & Jinyan Zhan & Bing Liu & Yongwei Yuan, 2014. "Model Estimation of Water Use Efficiency for Soil Conservation in the Lower Heihe River Basin, Northwest China during 2000–2008," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 6(9), pages 1-17, September.
    3. Yiting Chen & Zhanbin Li & Peng Li & Zipei Zhang & Yixin Zhang, 2021. "Identification of Coupling and Influencing Factors between Urbanization and Ecosystem Services in Guanzhong, China," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 13(19), pages 1-21, September.
    4. Démurger, Sylvie & Pelletier, Adeline, 2015. "Volunteer and satisfied? Rural households' participation in a payments for environmental services programme in Inner Mongolia," Ecological Economics, Elsevier, vol. 116(C), pages 25-33.
    5. Yanhua Zhuang & Chao Du & Liang Zhang & Yun Du & Sisi Li, 2015. "Research trends and hotspots in soil erosion from 1932 to 2013: a literature review," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 105(2), pages 743-758, November.
    6. Ferreira, Vera & Panagopoulos, Thomas, 2012. "Predicting soil erosion risk at the Alqueva dam watershed," Spatial and Organizational Dynamics Discussion Papers 2012-4, CIEO-Research Centre for Spatial and Organizational Dynamics, University of Algarve.
    7. Quang, Dang Viet & Schreinemachers, Pepijn & Berger, Thomas, 2014. "Ex-ante assessment of soil conservation methods in the uplands of Vietnam: An agent-based modeling approach," Agricultural Systems, Elsevier, vol. 123(C), pages 108-119.
    8. I. Gaubi & A. Chaabani & A. Ben Mammou & M. H. Hamza, 2017. "A GIS-based soil erosion prediction using the Revised Universal Soil Loss Equation (RUSLE) (Lebna watershed, Cap Bon, Tunisia)," Natural Hazards: Journal of the International Society for the Prevention and Mitigation of Natural Hazards, Springer;International Society for the Prevention and Mitigation of Natural Hazards, vol. 86(1), pages 219-239, March.
    9. Agostinho, Feni & Diniz, Guaraci & Siche, Raúl & Ortega, Enrique, 2008. "The use of emergy assessment and the Geographical Information System in the diagnosis of small family farms in Brazil," Ecological Modelling, Elsevier, vol. 210(1), pages 37-57.
    10. Benjamin Kipkemboi Kogo & Lalit Kumar & Richard Koech, 2020. "Impact of Land Use/Cover Changes on Soil Erosion in Western Kenya," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 12(22), pages 1-17, November.

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:gam:jsusta:v:6:y:2014:i:8:p:4795-4806:d:38628. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: MDPI Indexing Manager (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://www.mdpi.com .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.