Location: Stations--Desert Stations--Naiman
Naiman Desertification Research Station, Chinese Academy of Sciences
Address: Naiman County, Tongliao, Inner-Mongolia, China
zipcode: 028300 Tel.: 0475-4210197 Fax: 0475-4210197(Station) Tel.: 0931-4967201, 4967178 Fax: 0931-4967201 (Lanzhou)
E-mail: resdiv@ns.lzb.ac.cn zmtlzkyy@public.hh.nm.cn zhangth@ns.lzb.ac.cn bmzhaoxy@public.hh.nm.cn
Naiman Desertification Research Station(NDRS), Chinese Academy of Sciences(CAS) is located at Naiman County (120o42'E, 42o55'N, 358m a.s.l.) in Mongolian and subordinate to the Cold and Arid Regions Environment and Engineering Research Institute (CAEERI),CAS. It was founded in 1985. The station has also been affiliated with the Chinese Ecosystem Research Network (CERN) since 1990.
Since 1972, 13 years before its establishment, researchers form the former Institute of Desert Research, have carried out research on desertification and its control along the Naiman section of Beijing-Tongliao Railway. The station is about 600km northeast from Beijing, 12km to Naiman Railway Station and 1km to the No.111 State Highway.
Natural Conditions Naiman station lies at the southeastern part of Horqin Sandy Land which is in the transitional zone from Mongolia Plateau to Northeast Plain. Horqin Sandy Land belongs to a continental temperate monsoon climate characterized with dramatic variation of precipitation and temperature. The average annual temperature is 3-7 ?C and the annually accumulated temperature equal to and more than 10?C falls in the range of 2300-3200?C. Frost-free period is about 90-150 days and the annual precipitation varies from 350 to 500mm. The annually mean evaporation is in the range of 1500-2500mm. The annual mean wind speed is 3.5-4.5m/s and with a period of gale occurrence about 20-60 days.
Landscape here is mainly characterized by gently undulating sand dunes patched with comparatively large areas of sandy meadows or farmlands. The zonal soil is chestnut soil, but has been almost replaced with eolian sandy soil due to desertification. The underground water is 2-7m deep with mineral content less than 1g/l. The primeval vegetation is tree-scattered steppe, but now, mostly replaced by the psammophytic vegetations at several stages of succession.
The expansion of desertification in Horqin Sand Land is the results of the interactions of droughts, strong and frequent windblows, and the unwise socio-economic activities. The desertified area in Horqin Sandy Land was increased from 20% of the total land area by the late 1950s to 53% by the late 1970s and 70% by the late 1980s. In the past 40 years, approximately 400,000 ha. grassland and 270,000 ha. farmland have been buried under shifting sand in Tongliao.
Staff and Facilities
NSDR/CAS is staffed by 15 research workers whose majors cover 10 diverse research fields. The total construction area for offices, living quarters, a guest house, a dinning room, a meeting room, a laboratory building, a computer center and two garages is c. 2700m2. The guest house is elegantly decorated, each with a bathroom supplied with hot water through a solar-heating system. The meeting room is equipped with a projector, a slide projector and a video tape recorder. An IDD telephone and a fax machine can connect the station with other parts of the world. There are five laboratories equipped with 3 micro-meteorological digital loggers, plant photosynthesic analyser, an atomic absorption spectrometer, a nitrometer, a lysimeter, a spectrophotometer, a flame photometer and a contrifuge, etc., for plant ecophysiological, agroecological, meteorological, and chemical analyses and observations, and grassland management. A 210m2 glassroom is put into use. Seven field experiment plots are for the studies of nutrient cycling, water balance, micrometeorological measurements, grazing experiment, sandy soil improvement, plant ecology, and agroecology, respectively. A field of c. 70 ha. is used for the cultivation experiments of crops, fruit trees and grasses. There are eight PC/386-486 computers, and a laser printer at the station. A station-scale network is going well for data collection, data quality control and data analysis.