Traditional knowledge’s impact on soil and water conservation in mountain agricultural systems: A case study of Shexian Dryland stone terraced System, China

To explore how traditional knowledge acts in the soil and water conservation in mountain agricultural systems, this study selects the Shexian Dryland Stone Terraced System (SDSTS) as the study area and employs the social-ecological system (SES) framework and ecosystem service (ES) evaluation methods in a joint way. Results of the action mechanism analysis show that local farmers, as the main actors, fully utilize a variety of traditional knowledge, which constitutes a set of action situations at both the field and landscape scales. This has not only improved the soil and water conservation capacity of the SDSTS, but also met the livelihood need of the local people. Evaluation of the action outcomes further displays that the stone terraced fields have a higher capacity for soil and water conservation than other land use types and they also show a superior performance in food production. This has led to the highest comprehensive benefit per unit area found in the stone terraced fields (1.69 × 104 dollars·ha−1), much higher than forests (3.48 × 103 dollars·ha−1) and the grasslands (2.58 × 103 dollars·ha−1) on slopes. The traditional knowledge is proven extremely important for the SDSTS to achieve sustainable development and effective measures are thus needed to promote its inheritance and development. The combination of these two methods makes up for the shortcomings of the current traditional knowledge research, which mainly focuses on qualitative description and is lack of systematic explanation of mechanisms. The con-joint use of them also provides theoretical reference and technical support for more case studies of traditional knowledge in the future.