Sandy desertification in the north of China

With the economic and social development, desertification exerted increasingly pro-found influences on natural environment and social development and attracted widespread atten-tion of international communities, China, as one of the countries facing severe desertificationproblems, has witnessed some progress in understanding and combating the process of desertifi-cation through many years of hard work. Based on the experiences and research achievements,this paper briefly discusses the causes, developmental processes, damage assessment and con-trol mechanism of desertification in the north of China so as to provide some basic experiences forthe further study of desertification.