Life On The Terraces

Explanation: During a flight from Lijiang to Kunming in Yunnan Province, China, the landscape unfolded below me in shapes and colors that spoke of centuries of labor. These are the amazing agricultural terraced landscapes of southern China.

Terracing is done by following the topographic contours of the hillsides, all dug out by hand and planted to rice and many other crops.

Terracing helps intercept the rain to serve as natural irrigation. Then in this hot and humid land -- here, close to the border of Myanmar in southeast Asia -- the standing water evaporates to form clouds that once again return its bounty as more rain. It is a never-ending cycle: hydrologic and agricultural.

In the above image, notice the wind farm in the upper right.

Terraces are interspersed with villages and forest patches.
This is steep land; notice the road that must wind its
way to follow the contours of the slope.

Terracing here has gone on here for many centuries.

One study explored potential contamination of terraced rice paddies
by heavy metals, and found that higher-elevation paddies
tended to have lower concentrations of arsenic,
chromium, cadmium, and lead.

Here, you can see the immense effort that has gone into maintaining
the structure of these fields, and how the flat green rice paddies are
interspersed with other, steeper plots growing different crops.

Local ethnic groups including the Hani and Yi have been working these terraces
for several centuries. As permanent-plot agriculture, terraced plots contrast
with shifting agriculture, which we explored in several previous EPOW episodes.

To maintain the local lifestyle, to provide food, and to reduce poverty,
it has been suggested to enhance tourism and encouraging
local community custodianship of a tourism industry.

The counterpoint, however, is the need to conserve Yunnan's
biological diversity, where the province contains over
18,000 species of plants and 243 species of wildlife.

Finding the balance between poverty reduction,
crop production, protection of cultural identities,
and biodiversity conservation is a major challenge
in this beautiful and intensely-occupied land.

Information:
     Bai, J., R. Xiao, A. Gong, H. Gao, and L. Huang. 2011. Assessment of heavy metal contamination of surface soils from typical paddy terrace wetlands on the Yunnan Plateau of China. Physics and Chemistry of the Earth, Parts A/B/C 36(9-11):447-450.
     Gu, H., Y. Jiao, and L. Liang. 2012. Strengthening the socio-ecological resilience of forest-dependent communities: The case of the Hani Rice Terraces in Yunnan, China. Forest Policy and Economics 22:53-59.
     Yang, Y., K. Tian, J. Hao, S. Pei, and Y. Yang. 2004. Biodiversity and biodiversity conservation in Yunnan, China. Biodiversity & Conservation 13(4):813-826.

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