Background According to the fifth China desertification and sandy status bulletin, China's desertification land accounted for 27.2% of the total land area, while the sandy land accounted for 17.93%. In the prevention and control of wind erosion process, engineering measure is one of the important measures. Due to simple layout and adaptability to various environments, straw checkerboard are widely used to control wind-blown sand in China. Most of the existing researches focus on windproof capacity, while there is less research on ecological restoration of sandy land.

Methods To study the influence of the straw checkerboard on ecological restoration after their deployment, we conducted a long-term study of the sandy land management in this area over a period of many years. The layers of soil were sampled in plots with straw checkerboard set by 1 year, 2 years, 5 years, and 10 years, respectively, and each 10 cm was for a layer, totally 4 layers for 40 cm soil. The soil quality was carried out by drying method. The analysis of soil particle size was carried out by laser particle size analyzer, and the vegetation restoration was analyzed by pixel method. All data were analyzed by SPSS for statistical analysis.

Results 1) There was a positive correlation between water quality and straw checkerboard setting years(P < 0.05), the mass moisture content of sand plots with laying 1 year, 2 years, 5 years, and 10 years straw checkerboard was 1.11, 1.14, 1.36, 1.47 times, and the 0-10 cm, 10-20 cm, 20-30 cm, and 30-40 cm soil layer soil were 1.46, 1.26, 1.83, and 1.48 times than bare sand. The surface soil moisture content showed an increasing trend after the sand barrier set 1 year, and the deep soil moisture content increased obviously after the sand barrier set 5 years. 2) The soil particle size of the soil layer after setting straw checkerboard showed the increase of the clay and grain, and the decrease of the gravel content. The clay content increased by 2.5 times and the grain content increased by 1.98 times, sand content decreased by an average of 5.25%. Sand surface formation of 3-5 mm crust, some areas have begun to appear the presence of loam. The flow sand was basically fixed, the wind erosion was less, and the surface micro-terrain was more stable. 3) The germination of the pioneer plants appeared after sand barrier set 1 year, and the stable herbaceous vegetation community formed after sand barrier set 5 years, at the same time, the shrub plants appeared, the shrub community was formed after sand barrier set 10 years, and the herbaceous plants subsided. The vegetation coverage reached 59.83%. At the same time, we conducted the sample analysis of sand plot that closured 10 years, and found that the total coverage was more than 90%, and there was hardly any sand on the surface of the soil.

Conclusions Straw checkerboard plays a major role in sand control, it can be effective in improving the surface microenvironment, providing favourable conditions for the restoration of vegetation, further cooperating with vegetation, improving soil and promoting ecological restoration.