Soil conservation capacity of alpine meadow ecosystem and its economic value in the northern Qinghai-Tibetan Plateau

Alpine meadow is the largest grassland type in the Qinghai-Tibetan Plateau and its function of soil conservation is vital to protect the sensitive ecology and environment there. This paper designed different disturbance manners to discover the laws of soil erosion and their values by means of wind tunnel experiments at different speeds sampled in the northern Qinghai-Tibetan Plateau. From the results of wind tunnel experiment, it was found that both the different extent of destruction and varied wind speeds influence wind erosion. Their relations were non-linear. With the process of erosion, nutrients decreased to a certain degree. Finally, the direct value of the soil conservation capacity reached 1.5×10⁸-4.6×10⁸ per year by means of scenic analysis.