Abstract: Land degradation is an important factor restricting social and economic sustainable development in the Loess Plateau, China. In this study, a field survey was carried out to investigate the soil nutrients under different land use types (woodland, grassland, orchard, terrace and slope farmland) in the plateau. The analyzed results of 8 soil nutrient indicators at 33 sample sites showed that the effects or impacts of different land use types on soil erosion were quite different, especially for the indicators, such as soil organic matter content, total nitrogen content and available nitrogen content. The soil organic matter content and total nitrogen content were in an obvious order of woodland > slope farmland ≈ terrace > orchard > grassland, the available P content was in an order of orchard > slope farmland > terrace > woodland > grassland, and the available P content under crops was obviously higher than that under natural vegetation. The study results revealed that terrace, as a traditional soil conservation practice, could perform very well in conserving soil nutrients, but the soil conservation capability of slope grassland was the poorest in the gully-hilly region of the Loess Plateau.

Key words: land use, soil nutrient, gully-hilly region, Loess Plateau