The Regional Small Watershed Units Of Human Settlements And The Security Models On The Loess Plateau

The Loess Plateau is a unique region in the world with it's natural landscape, 5000 years' civilization and the tremendous treaments of water loss and soil erosion. Water loss and soil erosion have been caused by the loose soil, the strong wind, heavy rain and the dynamic era of the New Structure Movement in the region of the Loess Plateau. Over the thousands of years, human beings have never ceased to struggle in this special condition and exploit the wasteland for survival. However, what they have endeavored to do has unfortunately resulted in, among many brilliant achievements, a much worsened ecological environment and a limited growth in the regional economy. Since 1999, with the realisation of the grand reconstruction of the ecological environment with the new policy of "Defarming and Reafforestation", human settlements on the Plateau have been transformed into a brand new historical period. In the domain of the land use and territory planning, the planners are confronted with the new challenge and opportunity of the restoration and protection of natural resources as well as the harmonious coexistence and development of man and nature.From the theoretic junction of the research on the Loess Plateau, the Science of the Human settlements, Eco-landscape and the Urban Planning to the security pattern of the human settlements in this region, the paper firstly figures out the land-space unit as the same object of the different domains, and sets up a "Small watershed unit of human settlements of the Plateau Loess" as a research model. Based on the Small watershed Theory and experience of the "Mountain Style" inthe field of Soil and Water Conservation in this region, the other two styles of the "Corridor Valley Style" and the "Flatlands Style" have been advanced and disconformed as the regional typical units with case studies and theoretic analyses. Secondly, in accordance with the three different Small watershed settlements unit styles, there are three systems that the typical units' models have been re-organized as the Human construction systems, namely, the Human Living Suport System and the Nature Support System. The three typical security models are etablished by the conformity of the ecology, the economy and the culture, and the evolutional and descriptive theoretic model could also be covered by the three units. Thirdly, a description and evalution theoretic frame for the three typical security models has been created. The research work is expected to find the ecological way for integrative territory planning by the land-space of the human settlements in the Loess Plateau, and to study the planning theory to the transitional area and significant ecological elements.On the basis of the three case studies, frequent and constant work has been done in the corresponding field. With the analyses of the observation of the landscape elements, the landscape pattern of each model and the evolution of the landscape pattern, a feasible way of multi-discipline cooperation has been found eventually.(This studies is supported by the National Youth Science Reserch Foundation of China, No. 50008013)...