A Review of Soil Conservation Practices on Uplands

Soil erosion is one of the most serious environmental problems, and presents a key challenge to agricultural sustainable development. The unreasonable sloping farmland is an important reason result in soil erosion. However, the sloping farmland is an important land resource. How to effectively control the soil erosion of sloping farmland and improve the land productivity of sloping land, are important. Soil and water conservation practice is one of the important measures to control soil erosion and increase land productivity in sloping farmland. There are three aspects to reduce soil erosion for soil and water conservation practice in sloping farmland. Firstly, the measure increases the infiltration time of rainfall and reduce runoff velocity by changing the surface topography, such as contour tillage and ridging. Secondly, the measure weakens the splash of raindrops by increasing coverage, such as intercropping and straw mulching. Thirdly, the measure increases soil organic matter by improving soil physical properties, such as no tillage and sub-soiling. Soil and water conservation practice plays a key role to reduce soil erosion and improve soil water content in sloping farmland. Most studies are mainly concentrated on the erosion mechanism of soil conservation practices although these mechanisms are not completely. Thus, the study summarized the reducing erosion mechanism of soil and water conservation practices and explored the currently problems of these practices in agriculture to prospect of the measure research in the future.