Low-covered vegetation is one of typical vegetation patterns in arid and semi-arid areas of China through a long-term natural succession. Conventional studies concluded that when vegetation cover arrives at 40%, sandland is fixed. When vegetation cover is from 20% to 40%, sandland is under semi-shifting and semi-fixing. However, in practice it has been found that at low vegetation coverage, the horizontal distribution pattern of shrubs can have marked effects on fixation of shifting sands. There have many artificial or natural sand-fixing woodlands in arid and semi-arid areas of China which vegetation cover was lower than 40%. This paper tests the hypothesis that the horizontal distribution pattern of sand-fixing woodland at low vegetation coverage has the same law as shrubs. We compared the windbreak and sand-fixing effects of woodland with 20% coverage between belted and random patterns. Results show: (1) Compared to wind speed in open field, the relative wind speed of belted pattern is lower than random pattern, with 53.89% and 36.82% reduction rate at 200cm and 50cm height respectively; (2) compared to relatively regular changes in belted pattern, the horizontal flow field of wind speed in random pattern is very complicated, mainly affected by spatial pattern of crown; (3)The wind speed in random pattern is 27.45% and 22.55% higher than that in open field at 50cm and 200cm height respectively, the local wind uplift forms a strong eddy; (4) Average surface roughness of the belted pattern is 1.01cm, about 5 times of random pattern; (5) On the whole, among belted patterns the first belt was showed significant effects in reducing wind speed; and the wind speed after the second belt was is lower than that after the first belt; but superposition benefit was not obvious of reduced wind speed effect one by one belts; (6)the belted pattern has local uplift function at the base of the first belts windward which has relatively strong erosion effect in the basal part of forest belt, and the root systems for most of trees were eroded down and outcropped in the first belt, and the sand flow through a region was accumulated at the lateral of crown behind the belt; (7)Random pattern exists many low roughness zones in random pattern matching with local wind uplift zones, the strong eddy in these local uplift zones is an important driving factor of blowout pits. Arid and semiarid areas occupy about one third of China territory with less than 400 mm of annual precipitation. Traditional approaches to ecosystem restoration in China have focused on afforestation with high stand density such as the Three Norths Shelter Forest System Project and the Sand Control Program. However, the long-term results of those practices have been proved economically costly and ecologically unsustainable to some extent, with groundwater shortage and soil erosion increasing. We conclude from our experiment that soundly horizontal distribution pattern of sand-fixing woodlands at low vegetation coverage can fix shifting sands effectively, which may be helpful to environmental improvement and sustainable development of arid and semiarid regions in China.