Objective
This research investigates the biophysical and socio-economic impacts of policy-driven land use change in China's semi-arid regions. Range enclosure, livestock intensification and nomadic settlement is being implemented by the government at a scale involv ing millions of people and vast land areas.The rationale is to restore degraded land, prevent desertification and improve pastoral welfare. This project examines the performance and likely future success of these policies in meeting their goals. Measureabl e indicators will be compared of vegetation, livestock productivity, land use, household incomes and wildlife biodiversity in enclosed versus unenclosed management systems. Qualitative methods will evaluate social, cultural and economic repercussions. Part icipatory techniques involving local stakeholders will ensure incorporation of indigenous knowledge and local concerns. Technical innovations and best practices will be evaluated with stakeholders. Given the size of the Tibetan Plateau, changes in grazing intensity are internationally significant for understanding global climate change and carbon sequestration. Across the Tibetan Plateau, the project will compare regions representing five ecological zones in Sichuan, Gansu, Qinghai and the Tibetan Autonomou s Region. Field sites reflect the gradation of fencing intensity. A hierarchical research design begins with analysis of national policies, their application at local administrative levels, field site investigations of biological parameters at community l evel and, finally, detailed surveys of individual households and flocks. We hypothesise that no single system of grazing and rangeland tenure is optimal under all conditions in a heterogeneous environment constituting half of China's rangelands. Our goal i s to identify forms of management appropriate to specific market and ecological conditions and to bolster the capacity of Chinese scientists to influence their government's rangeland policies.
Fields of science (EuroSciVoc)
CORDIS classifies projects with EuroSciVoc, a multilingual taxonomy of fields of science, through a semi-automatic process based on NLP techniques.
CORDIS classifies projects with EuroSciVoc, a multilingual taxonomy of fields of science, through a semi-automatic process based on NLP techniques.
- social scienceseconomics and businesseconomicsproduction economicsproductivity
- natural sciencesbiological sciencesecologyecosystems
- agricultural sciencesanimal and dairy sciencedomestic animalsanimal husbandry
- natural sciencesearth and related environmental sciencesatmospheric sciencesclimatologyclimatic changes
You need to log in or register to use this function
Call for proposal
FP6-2004-INCO-DEV-3
See other projects for this call
Funding Scheme
STREP - Specific Targeted Research ProjectCoordinator
ABERDEEN
United Kingdom