The Tiger and the Pangolin: Cultural Ecology, Landscape Ecology, and Nature Conservation in China\u27s Southeast Uplands.

The Wuyi-Daiyun Mountains, which form the core of China\u27s Southeast Uplands Region, support a mosaic of subtropical forest, grassland, and cropland habitats, with some 1,620 species of plants and 326 species of terrestrial vertebrates. Forty-two animal species are officially protected, including the highly endangered South China tiger (Panthera tigris amoyensis). This study, based on one year of field research, examines relationships between village land use, landscape change, and wildlife management in the Meihuashan Nature Reserve of Southwest Fujian. It includes comparative studies of reserves in Longxishan and Wuyishan, further north, and Daiyunshan, to the east. Over 500 local gazetteer records of tiger attacks from 48-1953 A.D. provide baseline data on long-term anthropogenic environmental impacts in four provinces of the southeast. Habitat utilization surveys of five ungulate species in ten habitat types show how land use patterns affect prey densities. Intensive research in five Meihuashan villages examines historical settlement, demography, land use patterns, hunting practices, household economies, bamboo forest management, paper production, and village fengshui (geomantic) systems. Until the 1980s, Meihuashan villages produced and traded bamboo paper. Local prosperity led to population expansion in the mid-to-late Qing (1644-1911), and some villages grew to five times their present sizes. Extensive wet rice agriculture and widespread burning, the latter of which enhanced the growth of bracken (Pteridium aquilinum) rhizomes (a starchy dietary staple), kept the upland region largely deforested for centuries. The chaos of the early twentieth century brought population decline, rice terrace abandonment, and partial reforestation. Reforestation increased after burning was outlawed in the 1950s, but technological, commercial, and political changes intensified the extermination of regional fauna. Logging of Cunninghamia lanceolata in the 1980s also had a dramatic impact on montane ecosystems. Nature conservation should include maintenance of sacred fengshui forests; increased protection and restoration of remote broadleaf forests, montane wetlands, and montane grasslands; containment and intensification of commercial bamboo production under more equitable tenurial systems; and promotion of sustainable agriculture and animal husbandry. These efforts will be greatly enhanced when local people have a greater role in reserve management, research, and commerce

Simulating long-term food producing capacities in China using a Web-based land evaluation system

This dissertation presents a modeling approach to assess the long-term food producing capacities, and consequently food security, in China using a Web-based land evaluation system (WLES, http://weble.ugent.be). WLES implements a 3-step quantitative land evaluation model which evaluates the realistic yield of a field crop by considering the effects of (a) radiation and temperature regimes, (b) water stress, (c) limited soil fertility and (d) insufficient crop management. Homogeneous 5 km by 5 km grid datasets of climatic, soil, crop and management parameters were created. Food productions in 2030 and 2050 were simulated using production scenarios involving population growth, urbanization rate, cropland area, cropping intensity, management level and soil degradation. The model predicted that food crops may experience a 9.7% productivity loss by 2030 if the soil is degraded at the current rate (“business-as-usual” scenario, BAU); productivity loss will increase to an unbearable level of 36.7% by 2050, should the soil be twice more degraded than it is now (“double degradation” scenario, 2xSD). China's food producing capacity tends to decline in the long run if the general trend of soil degradation will not be reverted. China will be able to achieve a production of 430 million tons from food crops in 2030 and 410 million tons in 2050 under the BAU scenario, which are 11.5% and 15.5% lower than the 2005 level, respectively. In per capita terms, China will experience a food shortage of 9.8% in 2030 and 7.5% in 2050 even under the “zero-degradation” scenario (0xSD), compared to a 12.7% food surplus in 2005. Per capita food shortage in 2050 will be as high as 22.6% under the BAU scenario and 38.3% under the 2xSD scenario. The results suggest the present-day producing capacity (2005 level) will not be able to sustain the long-term needs under the current management level even if soil degradation is not becoming more limiting. The detrimental effect of soil degradation on food security is so evident that technical measures and policy levers must be activated today in order to avoid, or at least mitigate, the risks of food insecurity tomorrow

Enabling participatory research and development

Copublished with International Potato Center-users' Perspectives with Agricultural Research and DevelopmentSpanish version available in IDRC Digital Library: Investigación y desarrollo participativo para la agricultura y el manejo sostenible de recursos naturales : libro de consulta; volumen dos, facilitando investigación y desarrollo participativoProject 101592 related to a chapter in volume

New insights into the rates of soil formation and their contribution to our understanding of soil lifespans

Sustaining the provision of services by soils for future generations has become a critical goal for soil scientists. Preventing soil thinning and the exposure of the underlying parent material is paramount for achieving this goal. Soil thinning occurs when rates of soil erosion exceed those of soil formation. Although measuring soil erosion has received widespread attention, there has not been a commensurate effort to obtain rates of soil formation, and this undermines our capacity to determine the long-term sustainability of our soils. This thesis responds to that sizeable knowledge gap in two ways: measuring soil formation rates at sites previously subject to soil erosion monitoring, and demonstrating how rates of soil formation and erosion can be used to estimate soil lifespans. Cosmogenic radionuclide analysis was used to measure the rates of soil formation across four UK hillslopes. These included the first measurements of their kind for arable soils, under some of the thickest soil profiles that have been subject to this technique. For the first time, the CoSOILcal model was used to account for the effect of variable soil bulk density on the attenuation of cosmic rays. A sensitivity analysis showed that accounting for these bulk density data for profiles thicker than 0.25 m brings about a significant difference in the calculated rates of soil formation. The rates obtained for the four hillslopes studied here fell within the range of those previously published for similar climates and lithologies. However, it was also found that rates were faster for lithologies with a greater porosity and a reduced matrix. At one of the sites, rates of soil formation and erosion were used to calculate the lifespans for both the A horizon and the profile to bedrock. The shortest lifespans were found on the backslope, with the loss of the A horizon and bedrock exposure occurring in 138 and 212 years, respectively, in a worst-case scenario. Longer lifespans were observed for less erosive zones such as the toeslope where the time until bedrock exposure was more than triple that of the backslope. Similar analyses of soil lifespans were undertaken at the global scale. Combining over 10,030 plot years of erosion data from 255 sites with rates of soil formation, 93% of conventionally managed soils were found to be thinning, and 16% reported lifespans of less than 100 years. However, adopting conservation land-use and management practices were found to extend these lifespans, with over a third exceeding 10,000 years