SINO-AUSTRALIAN WORKSHOP

The presentation gives a general introduction to the main grassland types and crucial problems in northern China, and summarizes the development of Chinese grassland livestock system management from view of science, technology and policy. 

Research on Chinese grassland environment is concentrated on monitoring of vegetation, desertification and degradation. Main advance in grassland research, livestock research are reviewed and the policies that affect grassland and livestock system are also summarized. One main reason that Chinese grassland production system is weak is that grassland researchers concentrate on grassland separately rather than take animals into consideration, and animal researchers have poor knowledge about grassland. An integrated decision-making system is need to mate grassland, animal and market together.

The other key issue is that few monitoring technologies in China are real-time, and the results are difficult to get when making decision. Monitoring on grassland production at both regional large scale and farm scale is need to be furthered.

A frame of priority domain of grassland monitoring, management, research on restoration is proposed
for discussion.