Soil conservation planning in the People's Republic of China: An alternative approach

The severe environmental, social, and economic consequences of soil erosion have lead to the development of many soil erosion and conservation planning models. Yet many of these models require far more detailed baseline information than is available in developing countries, including the People's Republic of China. In addition, implicit assumptions about social and economic conditions are often inappropriate. This dissertation presents an alternative approach to soil conservation planning, one based explicitly on the types of data available and the social and economic conditions that apply in the People's Republic of China. The method has three major parts: (1) The identification of available land characteristic and socioeconomic goals, the potential soil conservation measures, and the production rules which link the two. (2) The building of a computer model based on series of decision trees which express the above relationships. This model is built using the Automated Land Evaluation System (ALES) software package. (3) Evaluation of the output of the above model using linear programming. This approach is applied to the Dingxi Region of Gansu Province in the northwestern China, and its results are compared to those of the planning methods currently used in that region. The method is found to potentially enable conservation planners to easily generate a number of different soil conservation plans and gain insight into the challenges and possible solutions to rural development problems. It can also assist them to understand the interaction of interdependent factors, both physical and social, involved in soil erosion and conservation. The ALES-based section of the method, in particular, allows planners to differentiate among the effects of conservation measures on different land units and to thereby potentially increase the accuracy of planning.