Effect of forest on sediment yield in North China

Forest-sediment relationship is a hot and important issue in Ecohydrology studies. China has implemented many large-scale reforestation programmes in the last decades to address the growing soil erosion and desertification. In this study, we made statistical and graphic analyses on the long-term hydrological data of the 39 watersheds in the rocky mountain area of the North China, and then we were able to analyze the effect of forest on sediment yield. Our results show that the effect is weak in the less-precipitation regions (when MAP < 500 mm). And in the more-precipitation regions (when MAP > 500 mm), the impact of forest on reducing sediment yield is different with the varied forest coverage (f), the relationship between the sediment yield and forest coverage show a quadratic polynomial.