Abstract
The Loess Plateau of China is faced with a continuous loss of land and productivity due to soil erosion. In 1998, an interdisciplinary project started with the objective to develop alternative land use and conservation strategies to reduce soil and water losses in an agricultural watershed. This project (EROCHINA, funded by the European Union and the Dutch Ministry of Agriculture, Nature Management and Fisheries) is a close cooperation between three European and three Chinese research organizations. The approach of this project consists of a participatory conservation planning to optimize land use and conservation measures, given the technical and socio-economical abilities of the land users and the related national, provincial and county regulations and restrictions. The EROCHINA project is innovative as land evaluation and soil erosion modeling are integrally used within the participatory conservation planning methodology. In this process, land evaluation is used to offer alternative land use scenarios based on the suitability of the land. These alternatives are presented to the farmers for discussion and finetuning. The deterministic hydrological and soil erosion model LISEM is used to assess the effectiveness of the alternative scenarios. In an iterative process between farmers and researchers, an optimal future land use and management strategy will be derived for the region under consideration.
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