HISTORICAL REVIEW: INVESTIGATION AND RESEARCH ON THE EVOLUTION OF HUMAN-ENVIRONMENT RELATIONS IN MINQIN COUNTY, GANSU

Abstract

Minqin County, located in the lower Shiyang River basin between the Tengger and Badain Jaran Deserts, is a key ecological barrier and a typical setting for studying long-term human–environment relations. This paper reconstructs that history through field survey of six archaeological sites (Triangular City, Liuhudun, Liancheng, Sifangdun, Dong’an City, and Shashan Fort) dating from the Shajing Culture to the Qing Dynasty, together with interviews in three modern villages (Sifangdun Desert Control Base, Shangrun Village, and Xinhua Village). Site distributions show a persistent north-to-south retreat of settlement. In the Shajing period, abundant river and marsh water supported dense occupation along Zhuye Marsh. Western Han immigration and garrison farming still found the oasis habitable, and many later county seats overlay earlier Shajing remains. From the Wei–Jin and Tang onward, northern sites were abandoned as inflow declined, lakes shrank, and desertification advanced; Ming–Qing activity contracted further south amid expanding cultivation and chronic water disputes. The overall pattern is “people retreating and sand advancing.” Twentieth-century reclamation intensified these pressures, producing severe sandstorms, falling groundwater, and rural out-migration. Since the early 2000s, canal conveyance, restricted irrigation, large-scale Haloxylon afforestation, and public-welfare campaigns (notably more than 80,000 mu planted at Sifangdun) have raised county forest coverage from about 3 percent to 18.28 percent by 2025 and reduced storm intensity, realizing “people advancing and sand retreating.” Remaining problems include the drying of natural channels and die-off of riparian trees, high irrigation costs, capped farmland, aging villages, and the risk that abandoned fields will again become sources of sand. The study traces a shift from limited early human impact, through intensification after the Tang, to deliberate ecological restoration in the present.