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Using traditional methods, this paper gave assessment to the extent of sandy desertification and the changes of land use in eight counties in Horqin Sandy Land over the period 1980-2010. A coupling model was established on the base of general Environmental Kuznets Curve (EKC) model to better understand the roles of economic growth and other factors to sandy desertification in an integrated framework. To avoid the bias owing to the data discordance and the autocorrelation in time series data, Unit Root Test was applied and an ARDL model was established to improve the EKC model. The results showed that there was a positive linear correlation between the extremely severe sandy desertification per capita and the real agricultural GDP per capita in the short run, while there was a Kuznets Curve in the long run, showing the effect of economic growth as both the pressure on land and the capability to alleviate the risk of sandy desertification in different phases. The effect of economic growth on sandy desertification was greatly influenced by exogenous factors, including strategy factors, climatic factors and the extent of sandy desertification itself. (C) 2015 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.