REVIEW ON THE VEGETATION SLOPE PROTECTION TECHNOLOGY

In recent years, with the rapid development of industry, transportation and urbanization in China, engineering construction is increased at a rapid rate, which is followed by various engineering problems. Among them, the most notable problem is the slope failure. In particular, in the construction of high-speed railway, airport, urban area and other projects with long distance and large area, excavation or backfilling has led to emergence of a large number of artificial slopes, breaking the balance of the original slopes. Therefore, it is of great importance to study the slope protection methods and technologies. Among slope protection methods, the vegetation slope protection technology is widely used because of its low cost and good effect. While current researches on the mechanism and implementation of the vegetation slope protection are scattered. We classify and summary the relevant research results of vegetation slope protection from two aspects:hydrological effect and mechanical effect of vegetation slope protection reinforcement mechanism. We concluded that:(1)the hydrological effect is embodied in the rainfall interception effect of the vegetation slope protection; (2)the mechanical effect is embodied in the root-soil interaction, which increases the shear strength of slope soils; (3)the reinforcement mechanism is the reinforcing effect of short roots on slope soils, the anchoring effect of long roots and the flushing-and weathering-preventing effect on slope surface. In general, a lot of experimental investigations and numerical simulations have been performed on the reinforcement mechanism and key technologies of the vegetation slope protection technology. However, there are still insufficient quantitative analysis in this field. The hydrological and mechanical effects of the vegetation slope protection have been commonly separated, however, in actual, they superimpose on each other and work together on the slope. In addition, studies on the selection of plants and the methods of vegetation conservation in practice are insufficient.