Application of the Seed-Bank-Reactivation-Based Ecological Remediation Technologies to Sandy Grassland

Seed bank plays an important role in remedying degraded grasslands and restoring vegetation therein. A seed bank reactivation technology was developed for sandy grasslands to address the problem of desertification of the grassland ecological function zone of the well-known Horqin Steppe. The technology begins with enclosing a tract of grassland as seed bank and then applies a kind of water-retaining fertilizer, a mixture of organic manure and water retention agent, into the tract of grassland, rapidly making the soil moist and fertile. Results show that application of the technology to the degraded grassland, increased its vegetation coverage by 66.43%, Shannon-Wiener diversity index by 8.90%; soil organic matter, total nitrogen, total potassium and total phosphorus in the 0-30 cm soil layer by 23.47%, 14.82%, 2.90% and 403.56%, respectively. Therefore, it can be concluded that the technology is conducive to improvement of soil fertility and species diversity of the plant community in a short period of time, restoration of the vegetation and control and fixation of mobile sand.