Relationship between Forests and Droughts in Modern China

This paper takes " Ding Wu Famine" and droughts in North China in 1920 and other droughts as examples, and analyzes the relationship between forests and droughts from four aspects as below: 1) decrease of forest coverage giving rise to droughts, 2) damages to the forests caused by droughts, 3)vegetation restoration due to the weakening of human activities after droughts and the great famine, and 4) the prevention of droughts by reforestation. Meanwhile, the paper reviews the research level of drought-forest relationships. Among them, the damages caused by droughts to the forests and vegetation restoration due to the weakening of human activities after droughts and the great famine were largely neglected in previous studies. It is believed that there exist complex interactions between forests and droughts. In the prevention of droughts, modern forestry scientists exaggerated the effect of forests on climate, while non-forest researchers paid more attention to comprehensive measures to cope with droughts, which is still of great significance to today's construction of ecological environment.