Excerpt
Seven hundred kilometers from Beijing, on the Loess Plateau, 31 scientists live on the side of a mountain. A complex with 1900 square meters of buildings with living quarters and offices for 30 full-time staff and guest researchers surround six laboratories, all nestled in the hills and deep gullies of central China. It's a research station devoted to studying soil erosion, land use, and ecosystem restoration. The station has been in operation since 1973, first as a research station for the Northwest Institute of Soil and Water Conservation, Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS) and Ministry of Water Resource, and since 1992 as a leading station of the Chinese Ecosystem Research Network (CERN) of CAS.
The station is located in the temperate forest-steppe zone, but the steppe land vegetation has been replaced—primarily by crops and shrub land. Ansai station is in the Heilutu soil region, but most of it has been lost to erosion, so the primary soil at Ansai is loess. The high hills and deep ravines are the result of the erosion of the 180 meter deep loess, more of which is lost every year. Ninety-three percent of the land in that county is …
Footnotes
O.R. “Reggie” Jones is a soil scientist at USDA-ARS, conservation and Production Research Laboratory, Busbland, Texas. He travelled in China in September 1994. This photo essay was prepared with the help of SWCS intern Wendy Despain.
- Copyright 1995 by the Soil and Water Conservation Society
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