Controlling Sand Movement Through Mechanical Measures: China’s Experience - Combating Desertification in Asia, Africa and the Middle East - page 20

Chapter 2
Controlling Sand Movement Through
Mechanical Measures: China's Experience

G. Ali Heshmati

Synopsis This chapter is an overview of the measures taken to stabilize mobile sand
to protect farmland, and infrastructure such as roads, railway tracks and irrigation
canals. The chapter explains in detail the various proven practices accumulated from
years of trial and error and derived from scientific investigation in China's extensive
sandy lands.

Key Points

• China is one of the states facing serious problems of desertification in the world.

The affected lands are mainly distributed in arid semi- arid and dry sub humid
areas in the west part of Northeast China, North Central China and the most
part of Northwest China. Shifting sand is one of the serious contributors to
desertification in China.

• China has developed very successful measures to stabilize shifting sands and

revegetate denuded areas. These technologies have been tested under extremely
difficult conditions in China's arid north west and are now used with equal
success throughout the world.

• There are two complementary measures used to fix shifting sands. One is

to protect the vegetation on the sand dunes or where such vegetation has
deteriorated, to plant trees, shrubs and grasses (see Chap. 3 ) . This type is
known as biological or plant measures. The other method depends on mechanical
measures. These are used to set up barriers on sand dunes or to cover the
surface of sand dunes by wheat straw, clay, and branches of trees, bamboo, reeds,
sorghum stalks, cobblestone, and petroleum chemicals and so on. Mechanical
measures have been proven to be effective in fixing shifting sand dunes. However,
their success is limited to a number of years, hence; they should be complemented