Controlling Sand Movement Through Mechanical Measures: China’s Experience - Combating Desertification in Asia, Africa and the Middle East - page 44

Box 2.1 (continued)
hinterland. The desert highway reclamation program received a nomination
for the tenth national achievements in science and technology in 1995, and
received the National first prize for progress in science and technology in
1996.

The Shapotou Research station on the Yellow River (Box 2.2 ) developed many
of the techniques that were described above and which have been applied in
the protection of trans-desert transport routes. The construction of the prevention
systems along the Baotou-Lanzhou railway line was awarded the National Prize on
progress in Science and Technology in 1986, and this was the initial desert railway
line crossing the southeast edge of the Tenggeli desert. In this area, grid dunes
dominate among the types of aeolian sand landforms with relative heights of 15-
20 m, and an annual average rainfall of about 185 mm, and a deep ground water
level that cannot be exploited by vegetation.

Box 2.2: The Shapotou Experimental Station, Ningxia, China

Shapotou Experimental Station was established in 1956, to find ways of
stabilizing mobile sand dunes of the Tengger Desert (Zhu and Liu 1989 ).
In 1956, the Batou to Lanzhou railway was constructed through 40 km of
the southern Tenggelli Desert (Plate 2). Therefore methods were required to
reduce sand encroachment on the rail track. Besides planting trees as wind
breaks, a procedure for establishing an artificial ecosystem on mobile dunes
was derived. The process converts areas with shifting sands with less than 5 %
vegetative cover to areas of fixed dunes with 30-50 % cover. Initially, a sand
barrier is established, encouraging aeolian deposition. Behind the sand barrier,
straw checkerboards (Fig. 2.22 ) are constructed which increase aerodynamic
roughness, thereby decreasing wind velocity and stabilizing the surface.

The prevention systems developed at Shapotou have two essentials which are
fixation and prevention . These were divided into four belts by disposition; Firstly,
the belt of preventing sands on the edge, using different material, with a height
about 1 m, equal to sand-fences preventing sand shifting, secondly, the belt of fixing
sands with no irrigation. Straw checkerboards (1 m

1m)arethemainpartsof
the prevention systems mixed with the shrubs and herbs, thirdly, the belt of trees
and shrubs with irrigation and fourthly, the belt of transporting sands with pebble
platforms.
The lengths of the integrated fundamentals belts are about 9 km including the
section of the second and fourth belt and the rest are composed of the belts of
fixation and transportation.