Sustainable Land Management Practices for Rubber Plantations in Mountainous Area of Hainan

This research was designed to help solve existing sustainable use problems such as soil nutrient loss and soil fertility decline in natural rubber plantations located in the hilly land of the south central mountainous area of Hainan Island,China. Two different land management practices, sustainable and traditional, were adopted in a four-year experiment.Contour terraced fields and deep ditches for green manure were built in a sustainable way with a balanced, need-based application of complex fertilizer. Results of the four-year experiment showed that these sustainable measures compared to traditional measures improved available P and available K; had a 47.8% less soil erosion (an average of 3663 t km^-2 year^-1) and a 15.9% lower runoff coefficient of 0.53; increased the dry rubber yield by 42.4%; and improved the economic benefit by 2.4 times. The sustainable land management scheme not only improved land utilisation efficiency, hut also helped maintain soil fertility while increasing production in rubber plantations. It thereby offered a reasonable and sustainable use for land resources in the tropical mountainous areas.