The Hexi corridor is a sensitive region of global climate and environmental change, which has arid climate and fragile ecological environment. This region is short for water resource, so the crop and pasture in this region all depend on the irrigation. Therefore, as one of the typical irrigated agricultural areas in Hexi corridor, there are extensive saline lands in the lowlands and rump areas of the rivers in Linze County. 

In Hexi saline area in Gansu province, scientists from Cold and Arid Regions Environment Engineering Research Institute (CAREERI) took different salinization stage farmlands under the two land use types (Hordeum vulgare L. and Medicago sativa L. cultivations) as the study object, the effect of land use types on change process of soil physio-chemical characteristics of salinization farmland was studied.  

Results were as follows, (1) in the depth of 0-10cm, soil organic matter and alkali-hydrolyzable nitrogen content in alfalfa were in the following order: slightly salinized field (S1)>non-saline field (S0)>moderately salinized field (S2)>severely salinized field (S3)>very severely salinized field (S4); for barley, it was in the following order: S0>S1>S2>S3>S4, and there had different significant difference between different salinized farmlands under the two land use types. (2) In growing seasons, soil layers of soil water content greatly fluctuating in alfalfa was at 0-80cm, for barley, it was at 0-20cm soil layers. Although seasonal variations of soil water content in different salinized fields in alfalfa were higher than that of barley. (3) Different salinization level fields had different soil depths of salt accumulation and occurring the peak of average soil salinity under two land use types. In the composition of soil soluble salt ions and ratio, the same salinized level fields under the two land use types were similar; but in barley, the ratios of CI^- and Na⁺ +K⁺ in S0 and S1 were significantly higher than that of S0 and S1 in alfalfa, and the change ranges of different ions from S4 to S0 were lower than that of alfalfa. 

This research is financially supported by the National Basic Research Program of China (Grant No. 2009CB421303), the National Natural Science Foundation of China (Grant No. 30972422) and the National Science and Technology R&D Program (Grant No. 2011BAC07B02-06). This paper has been published on the Journal of Arid Land Resources and Environment, Vol. 28 No. 2, Feb., 2014.