Site-specific Soil Conservation Approaches in Desertification-prone Areas in the Inner Mongolia Region, China

抄録

Desertification is still a severe problem in the Inner Mongolia region of China, despite the country’s efforts to stop land degradation. The authors carried out periodic field surveys for over a decade in different desertification-prone arid lands of Northern China. Based on a series of experiments and analyses, this paper proposes locally-tailored technologies that can ensure greater participation, and lead to more effective, sustainable measures to combat desertification in the area. Specifically, the potential of both cotton and coal ash as water-holding materials was experimented with sandy soil. From the results, an amount of 0.5% (by weight) cotton and 3% (by weight) alkali-treated coal ash (named artificial zeolite) mixed with sandy soil could ensure water retention in the soil and so facilitate upland crops growing in arid environments. The results also showed that, if mixed individually with the soil, both of these materials demonstrated constant positive effect as water-holding materials. However, dual application (both the items mixed together with soil) did not show constant positive effect. In addition, to diversify the potential uses of coal ash, the effects of artificial zeolite as a particle film sprayed over plant-leaves were also tested. The results showed that cotton plants with a particle film that were grown in sandy soil tended to transpire less water than those plants without a particle film on their leaves. Finally, since the properties of applied forms of coal ash (i.e. the artificial zeolite) differ based on the processing methods (alkali treatment) used, proper selection of the type of artificial zeolite could further diversify its potential uses, for example as a salinity mitigator in arid soil.