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| Abstract Title:
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| Modeling the Efficacy of the Sloping Land Conversion Program
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| Graduate Student Presenter:
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John A. Zinda
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| Name of the Author(s) and Affiliation(s):
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Jocelyn Behm, University of Wisconsin-Madison Department of Zoology;
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To address questions raised by China’s Sloping Land Conversion Program (SLCP), we are constructing a model to study how land use decision-making affects soil erosion on steep farmland. Under the SLCP, the Chinese government compensates people for converting sloped farmland to tree plantations or pasture, with goals of reducing soil erosion and lessening poverty. Our project combines field-based village surveys with simulation modeling to understand at a landscape level what social and biophysical factors influence whether a plot of land is enrolled in the program and how different enrollment strategies affect erosion. We model soil erosion outcomes of program decision-making at different levels given different utility functions for different actors. For example, insofar as households are involved, decisions might more strongly reflect household economic interests, whereas higher government organs make determinations, decisions might cleave to policy directives to afforest based on slope and contiguity. These might in turn lead to more or less fragmentation of afforested area. The decision-making model will be coupled to a soil erosion model; we will test several soil erosion models including USLE and SWAT, as there is not yet a widely used soil erosion model appropriate for this area. Model simulation allows us to test different utility functions and decision-making scenarios to inform data gathering and further analysis. In summer 2008, at Baoshan, Yunnan province, a project area for the International Centre for Research in Agroforestry, we will gather field data that will provide human and biophysical parameters for model runs and facilitate refinements.
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