CHAPTER A CONTINUING INQUIRY INTO ECOSYSTEM RESTORATION: EXAMPLES FROM CHINA’S LOESS PLATEAU AND LOCATIONS WORLDWIDE AND THEIR EMERGING IMPLICATIONS 4.8 John D. Liu 1 , Bradley T. Hiller 2 Director, Environmental Education Media Project; Visiting Fellow, Netherlands Institute of Ecology; Ecosystems Ambassador, Commonland Foundation 1 Freelance Consultant to the World Bank, Cambridge Institute for Sustainability Leadership, University of Cambridge, University of Anglia Ruskin 2 4.8.1 A JOURNEY BEGINS In early September 1995, after spending 15 years working as an international news television producer and cameraman, John D. Liu embarked on a life-changing assignment that ultimately prompted this section (Figure 4.8.1). Liu was part of a documentary crew flying in a small Soviet-era copy of a Fokker Friendship aircraft (dubbed the “Friendshipsky”), which landed at a small, dusty airport in Yanan in Shaanxi Province, on China’s Loess Plateau (see Box 4.8.1). 4.8.1.1 CONSIDERING THE IMPLICATIONS The Loess Plateau has proven to be an excellent place to pursue a type of ecological forensics to witness and understand how human actions over time can destroy natural ecological function. The restoration process of the plateau is providing a living laboratory in which the potential of returning ecological function to long degraded landscapes can be studied. Essentially, what has been witnessed and docu- mented on the Loess Plateau is that it is possible to rehabilitate large-scale damaged ecosystems. This realization has potentially enormous implications for human civilization. Witnessing firsthand many geopolitical events as a journalist, including the rise of China from poverty and isolation throughout the 1980s, the Tiananmen tragedy in 1989, the collapse of the Soviet Union, global terrorism, and much more, provided John D. Liu with references to compare to the restoration of the Loess Plateau. He quickly came to realize that, in terms of significance for a sustainable future for humanity, understanding what occurred on the Loess Plateau would be critical. Land Restoration. http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/B978-0-12-801231-4.00027-6 Copyright # 2016 John Liu and Bradley Hiller. Published by Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. 361