Terraces are old agricultural field systems created by the ancestors according to the local terrain and which still perform their production function today. These land use systems clearly show the wisdom and abilities of human to adapting to and taking advantages of the natural environment. Nowadays, tillage and management experiences and traditional agricultural knowledge on terrace systems can offer important insights and reference points for the sustainable development of modern agriculture. With industrialization and urbanization, however, the limitations of terrace agriculture in production efficiency are more and more obvious, which has led to a series of natural and man-made environmental and societal problems due to the terrain limits for using  farm machines and overwhelming development of tourism. These negative effects have led to the near collapse of terrace agriculture. Thus, a series of research projects on the protection of terrace agriculture have been conducted. This paper reviewed several of those projects, focusing in three areas: protected entities, problems and threats, and protective measures.

Protected entities included landscape elements (terrace structures, water conservation forests, farm irrigation systems and villages), ecosystem services (traditional crop varieties, biodiversity, environmental quality of terraces and the comprehensive agricultural patterns) and social cultures in rice terrace areas (traditional costumes and buildings, ethnic songs, dances, traditional festivals and traditional management of water and forest resources). Problems and threats identified included landscape destruction, environmental pollution, loss of biodiversity and disappearance of traditional cultures. Those threats were primarily caused by the impacts of modern science and technology, market demands, low comparative advantages of traditional agriculture and unscientific industrial development. Finally, several protective measures were identified and grouped into three main categories: reasonable industrial development, building institutions and protective management mechanisms, and developing scientific research, based on searchable and referable protection of rice terraces. In the future, studies on rice terrace conservation should focus on key terrace issues, case studies, comprehensive subject researches, long-term observation studies and industrial development researches.