About Research of Soil and Water Conservation

Research of Soil and Water Conservation

Research of Soil and Water Conservation is a Chinese-language academic journal devoted to soil erosion and soil and water conservation science, known in Chinese as Shuitu Baochi Yanjiu. It was founded in 1985, carries ISSN 1005-3409 and CN 61-1272/P, and is published bimonthly. The journal is supervised by the Chinese Academy of Sciences and sponsored by the Institute of Soil and Water Conservation of the Chinese Academy of Sciences and the Ministry of Water Resources. Its editorial department is at No. 26 Xinong Road, Yangling, Shaanxi Province — the institute's home in China's principal agricultural high-technology demonstration zone. Its official web presence is at stbcyj.paperonce.org. The journal covers soil erosion processes and monitoring, soil and water conservation measures and benefit analysis, eco-environment construction in soil-loss regions such as the Loess Plateau, and applications of remote sensing and bioengineering. It is a Chinese core journal and a source journal of the Chinese Science Citation Database (CSCD). It is distinct from the English-language International Soil and Water Conservation Research, a separate journal founded in 2013, and from its two sister journals at the same institute, the Journal of Soil and Water Conservation and the Bulletin of Soil and Water Conservation.

The Institute Behind the Journal

The journal's sponsor, the Institute of Soil and Water Conservation (ISWC) of the Chinese Academy of Sciences and the Ministry of Water Resources, was founded in 1956 and was the first scientific research institution established in the northwest of China by the Chinese Academy of Sciences. From 1987 it came under the joint direction of the Academy and the Ministry of Water Resources, and in 2001 it also came under the direction of the Ministry of Education as the Research Center of Soil and Water Conservation and Ecological Environment. Based primarily in the Loess Plateau while having a national sphere of influence, the institute principally studies and resolves the important science and technology issues of ecological restoration and environmental improvement in the field of soil and water loss. Its research structure includes the State Key Laboratory of Soil Erosion and Dryland Farming on the Loess Plateau, the National Engineering and Technology Research Center for Water Saving Irrigation at Yangling, and departments of watershed ecology and management, regional soil and water conservation and environment, and forestry and grassland ecology. The institute edits and publishes three academic journals — the Journal of Soil and Water Conservation, the Bulletin of Soil and Water Conservation, and Research of Soil and Water Conservation — of which this journal is the research-oriented member of the family.

Founding and Publication Pattern

Research of Soil and Water Conservation was founded in 1985, three decades after its parent institute, at a time when soil erosion on the Loess Plateau had become one of China's most urgent environmental problems and when the institute's field stations and simulated-rainfall research were generating a growing volume of results. The journal is published bimonthly, giving it six issues a year in which to carry the institute's and the wider community's research. Its editorial department sits at the institute's Yangling address, No. 26 Xinong Road. Yangling, in Shaanxi, is the seat of China's agricultural high-technology industries demonstration zone and of major agricultural research institutions, and the institute's supporting systems there include what it describes as the second largest simulated rainfall hall in the world, built in 1995, together with field experiment stations across the Loess Plateau. A journal edited in this setting is positioned at the centre of the experimental infrastructure — rainfall simulation, runoff plots and long-term field stations — on which Chinese soil-erosion science depends.

Scope: Erosion Processes and Monitoring

The first strand of the journal's scope is the science of soil erosion itself: the processes by which water and wind detach and transport soil, and the monitoring by which erosion is measured. Papers in this strand address rainfall erosivity, runoff and sediment yield, gully erosion, erosion on sloping farmland, and the use of models — the family of soil-loss equations and their Chinese adaptations — to predict erosion under different land uses and climates. Monitoring research includes the design and results of runoff-plot and watershed observation, the analysis of sediment records, and the application of remote sensing and geographic information systems to map erosion intensity and its change over time. Because the Loess Plateau produces some of the most severe soil erosion on earth, feeding the historically sediment-laden Yellow River, measurements and models published in this journal carry weight beyond their study sites: they inform the national soil and water conservation planning for which the sponsoring institute is a principal adviser.

Scope: Conservation Measures and Benefit Analysis

The second strand is applied: the design, effectiveness and benefit analysis of soil and water conservation measures. The measures studied are those deployed at scale in northern China — terracing of sloping land, check dams in gullies, afforestation and grass planting, contour and conservation tillage, and the conversion of steep farmland to forest and grassland. Research evaluates how much soil and water each measure retains, what it costs, and what benefits it returns in agricultural production, sediment reduction and ecosystem services. Benefit analysis in the journal therefore spans the technical, economic and ecological accounting of conservation programmes. This applied orientation distinguishes Research of Soil and Water Conservation within its journal family and within Chinese environmental publishing: it is the venue where the engineering and management experience of the Loess Plateau conservation campaigns is converted into citable, comparable research results.

Scope: Eco-Environment Construction and New Methods

The third strand covers eco-environment construction in soil-loss regions: the restoration of degraded ecosystems on the Loess Plateau and in comparable regions, including vegetation restoration, ecological agriculture, and the assessment of the environmental effects of large restoration programmes. Alongside this, the journal publishes methodological work on the application of remote sensing and bioengineering to conservation problems — using satellite imagery and spatial analysis to monitor erosion and vegetation change, and biological measures, from grass barriers to microbial techniques, as conservation tools. The journal's breadth across process science, engineering evaluation and restoration ecology reflects the structure of its parent institute, whose departments span watershed ecology, regional conservation and environment, and forestry and grassland ecology, and whose public laboratories cover chemical analysis, soil mechanics, plant physiology and biochemistry and nuclide analysis.

Indexing and Standing

Research of Soil and Water Conservation is a Chinese core journal and a CSCD source journal. Its standing is also visible in citation statistics: in the Chinese S&T journal citation data for agricultural engineering and environment-resource science, the journal recorded 3,084 citations with an impact factor of 0.860 in the 2015 data published in 2016 — the highest citation total among the soil and water conservation titles listed and comparable to leading agricultural engineering journals. The journal is published by one of the most authoritative institutions in its field: the institute that publishes it also maintains the Loess Plateau resources and environment science data centre and the national basic database of water and soil loss environment, and its library holds more than 219,000 volumes. For authors, core-journal and CSCD status make the journal a recognised venue within China's evaluation system; for readers, its institutional base guarantees proximity to the primary data of Chinese erosion research.

Distinguishing the Journal from Similarly Named Titles

Care is needed in identifying this journal, because several similarly named titles exist. Research of Soil and Water Conservation (ISSN 1005-3409) is the Chinese-language journal founded in 1985 at Yangling and profiled here. It is not the International Soil and Water Conservation Research (ISSN 2095-6339), the English-language quarterly founded in June 2013 under the Ministry of Water Resources, sponsored by the China Institute of Water Resources and Hydropower Research and partner organisations, published with Elsevier on ScienceDirect and serving as the official journal of the World Association of Soil and Water Conservation. Nor is it the American Journal of Soil and Water Conservation published by the Soil and Water Conservation Society. Within its own institute it is also distinct from the Journal of Soil and Water Conservation and the Bulletin of Soil and Water Conservation, its two sister journals, which have their own scopes and histories and are covered separately in this directory. Citations should give the full title with ISSN 1005-3409 and the Chinese title Shuitu Baochi Yanjiu.

Readership and Significance

The journal's readership consists of soil and water conservation scientists, erosion researchers, watershed managers, ecological restoration specialists and the engineers and planners of China's conservation programmes. Its significance is that it is the research journal of the institute that has led Chinese soil-erosion science since 1956, published from the Loess Plateau region where that science is most needed. Across its run since 1985 it documents the transformation of the plateau itself — from an emblem of erosion and poverty to the site of the world's largest ecological restoration programmes — and the scientific debate over how erosion should be measured, treated and governed. For the WorldNM directory's magazines category it stands as a scholarly journal: Chinese-language, bimonthly, core-indexed, and identifiable by its Yangling editorial address, its Chinese Academy of Sciences supervision and its place in the institute's three-journal family.