Monitoring land desertification in northern area of the Loess Plateau by 3S technique A case study of Shenmu County in Shaanxi Province

The change of land desertification in Shenmu county of northern loess plateau was monitored by combing the field survey and remote sense data and the social factors affecting land desertification were discussed in this study. The results of this study showed that the areas of desertification land decreased by 10% from 1986 to 2004; however, spatial distribution of desertification was different, indicating that the area of desertification land decreased obviously in the northern west region and increased in the southern regions. After reviewing the relationship between change of desertification land and social factors, this study showed that desertification land showed an increasing trend in the regions where the percent of cropland was bigger and land per capita was less, indicating that the cropland utilization contributed to land desertification and improvement conventional cultivation benefited to alleviate the land desertification.