Evaluation on national achievement and effect of soil and water conservation, a project released by CAS in 2016, has been finished field investigation up to 6 times, including the black soil region in the northeast China, the karst region in southwest China, the red soil zone in the south China, the stony mountain zone in the north China, the windy and sandy zone in the north China, and Loess plateau in the northwest China.

Generally, after several decades control on soil erosion, great achievement has been achieved, the sediment into Yellow River and Yangtze River have been reduced effectively, the desertification has been controlled to a great extent, the black soil land has been protected well, the agricultural production situation and eco-environment have been improved significantly.

The comprehensive management for small watershed could be found anywhere in China, after adopting such measures, vegetation coverage has been increased more than 30% in some regions.

Here are some comparisons before and after treatment:

This project is aimed to evaluate the specific effects of soil and water conservation through summarizing the long term results in monitoring and measurement in field stations based on small watersheds. The following questions were expected to be answered: (1) how to set up soil and water conservation measures in different regions? and how to adjust land use? (2) what effects have been achieved for adopted technologies and measures? (3) how to make people rich during the treatment of soil erosion?

This project started from the beginning of 2016, and will be finished by the end of 2018, main researchers are from the Institute of soil and water conservation of CAS & MWR, China institute of water resources and hydropower research, Beijing Normal University, Institute of soil science of CAS, Institute of Mountain Hazards and Environment of CAS, Institute of subtropical agriculture of CAS, etc.