Progress and Problems of Development Research and Application of Sand Barriers

Due to the restrictions on the conditions for afforestation and sand control,the development research,and application of sand barriers have accelerated in recent years,but some problems that cannot be ignored have emerged in practice. In this paper,the functions of wind prevention,sand blocking and fixation,improving soil physical and chemical properties and increasing plant diversity of sand barriers,accretion coefficient and capacity between sand barriers,and mobile sand barriers were analyzed firstly,and then several issues that should be noted in the development and application of sand barriers were proposed. The results show that sand barriers can fix sand on the spot and maintain the stability of sand surface. As an auxiliary measure before afforestation on a mobile sand surface,they are practical and feasible. The biggest drawback of sand barriers is that they are easy to be saturated. Although they can increase plant diversity and surface roughness,they lose the function of blocking sand flow after being saturated,and their function of in-situ sand fixation also rapidly decreases with the degradation of sand barriers. Mobile sand barriers overcome the disadvantage of sand barriers being easy to be saturated to some extent,but the cost greatly increases. In terms of desertification prevention and control by plants,plants are used as sand barriers to study their functions of sand blocking and sand fixation in many researches and practices,but the more important ecological functions of adjusting temperature on sand surface and achieving surface thermodynamic equilibrium of plants are ignored.