Effect of Irrigation on Vegetation Production and Biodiversity on Grassland

Recently, irrigation plays vital role on the recovery of degraded grassland in northern pastoral areas. Different amount irrigation experiment (adequate and moderate irrigation) was carried out from 2007 to 2009 on Xilamuren Grassland, Inner Mongolia. The experiment plots vegetation quantitative characteristics were investigated during 2007 similar to 2011. Compared with no irrigation plot, it's concluded that:. Different irrigation amount have the same effect on improving the production and biodiversity during irrigation.. When stopped irrigation, the production and biodiversity of the two ever irrigated plots degraded more and faster than the non irrigation plot equally. The results are important to restore degraded grassland. (C) 2012 Published by Elsevier Ltd. Selection and/or peer-review under responsibility of Society for Resources, Environment and Engineering