| Abstract Aeolian desertification is land degradation characterized by wind erosion in arid, semiarid and sub-humid regions mainly resulted from the excessive human activities on natural resources in Northern China. With along the development of economy and society, aeolian desertification/land degradation exerted increasingly profound influences on natural environment and social development. The aeolian desertification mostly occurs in the interlacing agro-pastoral region, grassland, semiarid rainfed cropland and oasis irrigated cropland regions in Northern China and the whole situation of aeolian desertification comes to depravation as well as only part of the desertified land had been controlled. China, as one of the countries facing with severe desertification problems, has made some progresses in understanding and combating the process of aeolian desertification through many years of hard work. Based on existing experiences and research achievements, this paper briefly discusses the causes, developmental processes, assessment and control mechanism of aeolian desertification in Northern China so as to provide some basic experiences for the further study and combating the aeolian desertification.
Keywords: aeolian desertification, cause and process, assessment, desertified land control |