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Land Degradation on Barren Hills: A Case Study in Northeast Vietnam

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Abstract

The term “barren hills” has been a keyword for land degradation in the uplands of Vietnam for over a decade. Nevertheless, the “barren” land is still not adequately ecologically characterized. In this work, we analyze land use-induced changes in vegetation and soil properties along a sequence of barren hills types formed on one physiotope. The study is undertaken in the Bac Kan province, one of the poorest upland regions where livestock plays an important role. A transition from an old-growth laurel forest to a sparse manmade grassland is characterized by a total of 177 species, rapid species turnover, and discrete dominants, and an overwhelming effect of disturbance history on both soil and vegetation patterning. Land degradation is most apparent in land use-induced maintenance of arrested successions, and the regeneration course is shifted towards drier formations. We hypothesize a conceptual model as an aid to understanding the process of early fallow differentiation in response to the patterned, fine-scale disturbances. The larger-scale implications of the observed trends in regeneration potentials deviation, and, in particular, the effect of water buffaloes in halting fallow successions, are discussed.

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Notes

  1. “At the highest point of a watershed there is a special forest Dông, where Ma, the Ghost, dwells. If this forest is destroyed, Ma has no place to stay, and gets very annoyed. Then he brings madness and death and illness to the nearest village, even if these villagers are innocent of Dông clearing. Therefore, Dông must never be slashed and burnt” (from the Dao legend, recorded in Ban Cuon village, Bac Kan, Vietnam).

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Acknowledgments

This work was a part of the C2 subproject of the Uplands Program (SFB 564: “Sustainable land use and rural development in mountainous regions of SE Asia”), funded by the German Research Foundation (DFG). The first author thanks the Vater und Sohn Eiselen Stiftung (Ulm, Germany) for the research scholarship. The support of our work in Vietnam by the Vietnamese Agricultural Science Institute (Hanoi, Vietnam), and the Systèmes Agraires de Montagnes Project is acknowledged. We thank Prof. Tran Dinh Nghia (Hanoi National University, Vietnam) and Dr. Steve Renvoize (Royal Botanical Gardens, Kew, U.K.) for the supervision of species identification, Dr. Sam Fujisaka (CIAT, Colombia) for critical reading of the manuscript, and Prof. Ernest A. Kirkby (University of Leeds, U.K.) for linguistic improvements.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Institute for Multidisciplinary Research, 11030, Belgrade, Serbia

    Nina Nikolic & Miroslav Nikolic

  2. University of Hohenheim, Institute for Plant Production and Agroecology in the Tropics and Subtropics (380c), 70599, Stuttgart, Germany

    Rainer Schultze-Kraft

  3. Institute for Landscape Ecology (320), University of Hohenheim, 70599, Stuttgart, Germany

    Reinhard Böcker & Ingo Holz

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  1. Nina Nikolic
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Correspondence to Nina Nikolic.

Appendix

Appendix

Table 6 Floristic transition from open grassland to old-growth forest
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Nikolic, N., Schultze-Kraft, R., Nikolic, M. et al. Land Degradation on Barren Hills: A Case Study in Northeast Vietnam. Environmental Management 42, 19–36 (2008). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00267-008-9099-1

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