Research Progress of Soil Moisture in Karst Areas of Southwest China

Karst area in southwest China is the typical ecological environment fragile area. The ecological environment of it has been severely destroyed and rock desertification was generated because of the huge population and environmental pressure. It not only caused serious soil erosion, shallow soil and lower water storage capacity of Karst region, but also led to the reduce of crop yield. So soil moisture has become the main control factor of regional soil erosion, vegetation growth and recovery process. For the need of regional environmental protection, vegetation reconstruction and the regional ecological security, we proposed the research focus and direction of Karst soil moisture in the near future, based on the summary of soil moisture monitoring technology development trend and the existing soil moisture research results in Karst area of China. The objective of this paper is to offer the better science basis for the ecological restoration and reconstruction in Karst area.