Taking Ansai County located in loess hilly and gully area as a case, this study analyzes the land use changes driven by the SLCP （Slope Land Conversion Program） and the farmers＇ responses by household survey and participatory rapid appraisal （PRA）. It is found that the SLCP aroused various changes in land use, agricultural production, rural incomes, etc. In the period of 1999-2005, the farmland and grasslands were reduced by 26,809 ha and 17,571 ha respectively, while forestland increased by 38,203 ha; greenhouse vegetable and orchard got a quick development, with the area enlarged by about 7 times and nearly doubled respectively. The SLCP reduced the area of crops particularly those that normally grown on slope lands, e.g. the sowing area of winter wheat ped from 19.39% of the total cropping area in 1999 to 0.98% in 2005. Draught animals, pigs and sheep have a decline in the number because the remained land and the ban on grazing on natural grasslands can not provide sufficient feed forage. Thanks to the financial subsidy, farmers increased land inputs and thus outputs. To achieve long-term sustainable development and improve rural income, the government should continuously support farmers to improve the land management, to adopt alternative land use systems, and to increase inputs on soil conservation. Vegetable and fruit production are two promise land use systems, and should be further developed.
The population growth and demand for high living standard not only increase food demand but also cause more loss of the limited cultivated land resources. Cultivated land loss caused by disasters and the implementation of the ＂Conversion of Cropland to Forest or Grassland＂ project make this situation even worse in China. Thus, there is a problem to be solved imminently that to what extent the cultivated land can guarantee food security of China. Based on time-series data on food production and cultivated land area from 1989 to 2003 and other research results, this paper constructs quality index of cultivated land according to different land quality. Regression models are adopted to predicate changes of main factors from 2004 to 2030, which have great effect on cultivated land area or grain productivity, and verify accuracy with coc^cient of determination （R2）. Nine results were got according to three scenarios of decreasing rate of population growth rate and three cases of urban and rural built-up area per capita. There results show that China＇s food supply can only be maintained at a low to middle level of 370-410kg per capita, that is, China has enough land productivity to meet primary demand of food independently. However, it cannot reach the safe target of 500kg per capita if there is no breakthrough in breeding or no remarkable improvement of irrigation works, when the grain self-sufficiency maintains no less than 80%. To breed productive crops and to improve land productivity by mefiorating low quality cultivated land are appropriate measures to shrink the gap between food demand and supply. The results may offer helpful information for the formulation of policies on population growth, land use, protection of cultivated land.
Aiming at alleviating the serious soil erosion, the Chinese government initiated the Sloping Land Conversion Program （SLCP） in 1999. Now; after 8 years of project implementation, the ecological recovery effects of the SLCP have become the hot issue of academic circle. This paper; raking the loess hill and gully area of northern Shaanxi as an example, presents a methodology for assessing the vegetation restoration effect of SLCP with normalized difference vegetation index （NDVI）. The key components include calculation of the Growing Season NDVI （GSNDVI）, and estimation of the NVDI change induced by climate and SLCP, respectively. Based on the method, the NDVI change between 2000 and 2006 was obtained using the GSNDVI that excluded the noise from snow and ice. After the part of total NDVI change caused to： climate variation was estimated using empiric formulae, we obtained the part induced by human factors, i.e. the SLCP The human induced part of ND VI change was considered as an approximation indicating the effect of the SLCP on the vegetation. Finally, we analyzed the ND VI change characters of the whole study area, different slope lands and different land use types by spatial statistics method. Results show that the vegetation condition is significantly improved by the SLCP, particularly land types that directly involved in the SLCP, such as steeply slope farmlands, degraded grasslands, etc.
