Abstract

There is an area of more than 11,000 km2 in northwest China which is covered by Pisha Sandstone, a kind of loosely bonded sandstone which was formed during the Tertiary period. The sandstone is hard when it is dry and easily changes into sand when wet. The area has a very high erosion rate (over 20,000 t/km2·yr) and very poor vegetation. Seabuckthorn (Hippophae rhamnoides Linn) has been successfully used to reforest gullies and control erosion in the area. Field investigations have been carried out in the Xizhao gully to study the effects of the species on sediment trapping and ecological improvement. It is found that the seabuckthorn mutualizes with Clinelymus dahurcus Turcz, and the two species form dense double-layer vegetation with well developed middle and understory plant communities. The vegetation cover in the gullies reaches 95%. The forest was developed in the late 1990s (first introduced in 1995), with a sediment trapping efficiency of more than 90%. Rainstorm water has also been stored in the gully within the trapped sediment. The water content in the vegetated gully is about twice as high as the uncontrolled plot. The understory community of the seabuckthorn vegetation is much better than in areas forested with poplar or willow. The taxa richness and the thickness-coverage of the sublayer vegetation in the seabuckthorn area are about twice as high as in the latter two.

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