Research on land use optimization for reducing wind erosion in sandy desertified area: a case study of Yuyang County in Mu Us Desert, China

Abstract

Desertification land occupies vast area of world, which is a big threat to eco-environmental safety and brings huge economic losses. Wind erosion is a key process and ecological problem of land desertification in arid and semi-arid area, where unreasonable land use is one of major causes. Therefore, optimizing land use is a substantially effective approach to eco-environmental safety and development of sandy area. Yuyang County, located in Mu Us Desert of semi-arid sandy area and farming-pastoral zone in North China, was selected as a typical study area. The principles and methods on environmentally friendly land use planning surrounding urban area for combating soil wind erosion were constructed, and a “tri-circle” land use paradigm around Yulin City was worked out. It was predicted that by the year of 2020, farmland will be only 10 percent of total area of Yuyang County, which are able to meet the need of food and meat. The proportion of ecological land, productive land and living land would be 2.27:12.09:85.64, which will lead to a reasonable land use system for ecological security and social-economic sustainable development of the region. It shows that this research will help construct the sustainable land use system under ecological security, and ensure habitat environmental safety in urban area.