Wind tunnel simulation and assessment of soil moisture conservation of alpine grassland in Qinghai-Tibet Plateau

The alpine grassland play an important role in maintaining ecological balance in Qinghai-Tibet Plateau. This study aimed to simulate impact of human activities on services of water conservation of alpine grassland by using the wind tunnel laboratory. Three types of grassland were selected which included alpine meadow,alpine steppe meadow and alpine steppe. The treatment pat-terns included cutting surface vegetation and broken root system. The results showed that compared with the original status,the per-cent of soil moisture content of three grassland samples decreased with increasing wind velocity under different treatments but the changes are greater after broken the root system than that after cutting ground vegetation. And as the root system was broken the soil moisture content ranged from high to low in turn QZ1 (alpine meadow),QZ2(alpine steppe meadow) and QZ3(alpine steppe). With the disturbed degree increase the changes of soil moisture content from high to low are QZ1,QZ3 and QZ2 respectively. In terms of the results,the ecosystem function of soil moisture conservation for three types of grassland should be alpine meadowalpine steppe meadowalpine steppe.