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Climate Change 2016
October 27-29, 2016
Volume 7, Issue 9(Suppl) J Earth Sci Clim Change
ISSN: 2157-7617 JESCC, an open access journal
conferenceseries .com
October 24-26, 2016 Valencia, Spain
World Conference onClimate Change
Coupled soil and water conservation and rain fed agriculture system to cope with climate change in
semiarid Africa and China
You-Cai Xiong1, Levis Kavagi2, Jiang Zhang1, David Mburu3, Tao Tian 1 and Lu Cao1
1Lanzhou University, China
2United Nations Environment Program, Kenya
3Jomo Kenyatta University of Agriculture & Technology, Kenya
Improving rainwater resource use efficiency and controlling soil and water loss are the two major challenges under climate
change in semiarid Africa and China. The two regions confront an increasing ecological crisis of water and soil loss and
vegetation degradation, lowering CO2 sequestration of plant community and field productivity of main crops due to extreme
climatic events. It is a critical practical demand to improve food production and soil & water conservation capacity in this
region. Our previous work showed that rain fed farming system of northwest China led to significant increase in rainwater
use efficiency and crop yield in semiarid Kenya and Ethiopia since 2011 and also made the social-economic investigations
on farmers’ livelihood and ecosystem conservation as well. Local community is mainly featured by small household farmers,
and the reclamation activities at sloping lands resulted in serious soil and water erosion. We designed and implemented a
few successful case studies by introducing micro-field rain-harvesting farming system to improve food production level at
flat lowlands, and conducting terrace construction programs to retain rainwater and restore vegetation at sloping highlands
in the two regions. By this, social-economic-ecological outputs had been improved simultaneously. We therefore attempted
developing a theoretical framework to guide the scientists, farmers and decision-makers to work together to adopt and extend
the coupled rain fed agriculture and soil & water controlling system. The coupled system can act as a promising solution
to increase vegetation cover, decrease soil & water loss, improve carbon sequestration and food production, and ultimately
achieve ecosystem sustainability under climate change in semiarid Africa and China.
Biography
You-Cai Xiong has completed his PhD from Lanzhou University, China and Post-doctoral studies from McGill University and ECORC, Agriculture & Agri-Food
Canada. He is currently the Deputy Director of MOE (Ministry of Education) Engineering Research Center for Dryland Agriculture and Ecological Conservation,
China. He has 20-year research experience in ecosystem sustainability and food security under climate change and has published more than 150 papers in reputed
journals. He has been serving as an Editorial Board Member of over 10 international journals.
You-Cai Xiong et al., J Earth Sci Clim Change 2016, 7:9(Suppl)