地理学报

Acta Geographica Sinica ›› 2010, Vol. 65 ›› Issue (4): 476-484.doi: 10.11821/xb201004009

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Land Pressure and Its Alleviating Approaches for the Mountainous Region of Northern China

ZHU Hui-yi   

  1. Institute of Geographic Sciences and Natural Resources Research; CAS; Beijing 100101; China
  • Received:2009-08-20 Revised:2010-01-30 Online:2010-04-25 Published:2010-04-25
  • Supported by:

    National Natural Science Foundation of China, No.40671009

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Abstract:

The mountainous region of northern China including mountain areas in the Haihe and Huaihe drainage basins covers an area of 28×104 km2,where soil erosion is the overwhelming environment issue.Since the 1950s,soil and water conservation projects,such as those based on small watersheds,have partly improved the situation of soil erosion,but there is still 13.47×104 km2 of eroded area due to land use and land cover changes under the pressures of both population growth and economic development.Therefore,to alleviate regional land pressure becomes more important in the restoration of regional environment.In this paper,we evaluate the grain production pressures,economic development pressures and soil conservation pressures for 27 sample watersheds listed in those soil conservation projects,and then compare their land pressures and actual production abilities to find out which alleviating approaches were adopted and which approach performed the most important.Empirical analysis reveals that land pressure was spatially non-balanced,but there was a balancing trend between land pressure and production ability.If none of alleviating approaches had been adopted,only 76% of the watersheds could bear grain production of 300 kg/a per capita,another 24% of the watersheds could only bear grain production of 225 kg/a per capita,while about 18% of the watersheds could bear their economic development pressure that is equal to average labors\' alternative cost.Out-migration of labors,fruit production and locally specified tour were the major approaches to alleviate land use pressures,and labors migration performed the most important.Those approaches alleviated not only grain production pressures and economic development pressures of the watersheds,but also soil conservation pressures.

Key words: land pressure, alleviating approaches, environment restoration, mountainous region of northern China

CLC Number: 

  • F301