Guizhou Province of China is a key karst area and is facing serious rocky desertification. Controlling the rocky desertification in karst areas in Guizhou has been formally established as a national goal. After decades of experience, some control modes are now recognized for their ability to reduce desertification and to provide income for the local community. However, a unified, integrated ecological and economic evaluation of these modes is lacking.

Under the guidance of Prof. Hai Ren, and Hongfang Lu, Dr. Fang Cheng (Vegetation Landscape Ecology Research Group, South China Botanical Garden, Chinese Academy of Sciences) evaluated three modes (planting systems) and compared these modes with the planting of corn (CP), a traditional crop in Zhenfeng county, Guizhou Province, cooperated with local government. The three typical modes were pepper planting (PP), pitaya cultivation (PC), and honeysuckle-plum inter-planting (HPIP). Furthermore, the ecological and economic effects of adding livestock and biogas subsystems to the PP mode were quantified. The results showed that the PP mode provided the highest ecological-economic benefits, while the HPIP mode provided the highest ecological benefits. The addition of the livestock subsystem to the PP mode could improve the economic benefit density of the system with a tradeoff of environmental loading, while the addition of the biogas subsystem could partially correct for this. Based on the results of this study, a suite of suggestions were brought up for optimization and compensation sack.

This research is published in Journal of Cleaner Production (IF: 5.715, http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0959652617309976). Combined this study with the science and technology aid-the-poor work of South China Botanical Garden in Guizhou Province, Dr. Hai Ren also brought up a suite of suggestions for the ecological and economic development at rocky desertification karst areas which was brought into the Specific Reports from Chinese Academy of Sciences（2015, 4）as a valuable policy and strategy making reference for both central and local government.

Figure 1. Landscape before rocky desertification control

Figure 2. Landscape of the three control modes and corn farmland（Provided by Fang Cheng）