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CHINA ACTS TO STOP MARCH OF THE DESERT
(though China has made A notable progress deser
XX liflcalton conUpuca to threaten large tract of Its precious cropkind
Deserts and desertification prone areas 1n China cover 1 49 million square kUsmeters. or 15.5 per cent of Its total land mass. About half the size of India, they lie mostly In Xinjiang In the Northwest and Inner Mongolia in the North.
According to Zhu Zhenda. director of the Desert Research Institute In Lanzhou, capital of Gansu province in Northwest China, deserts arc expanding by 1.500 kilometers a year, especially Ip Eastern Inner Mongolia and the adjoining Hebei province.
'Desertification affects more than 50 million Chinese farmers and herdsmen," Dr. Zhu said.
To control the push of the deserts, China in the past decade has built a dozen sandcontrol stations and hundreds of sand-control demonstration districts, which have altered the appearances of many areas.
The Lanzhou Institute said land erosion has been halted in about 10 per cent of the country's 334,000 square kilo-miters of desert- Ificatlon-pronc land: in another 12 per cent, soil erosion has been eased.
The Hext Corridor on the silk road In Gansu province is an example of successful control. To fight the southward encroachment of the Badain Jaran and Tenggcr deserts— third and fourth largest In china— local residents have built a 1.200-kilomctcr-long forest belt, bringing 184.000 hectares of shifting sand under control and preventing farmland and 1.400 villages from being buried by sand As a result. grain output in the area has increased by an average of 8 per cent annually over the past decade.
Furthermore, farmers there have fertilised 27.000 hectares of barren land,growing wheat, corn, sunflowers, vegetables, melons and others crops. The per hectare output of wheat now ranges from six to eight tons a year. Numerous apple and pear orchards and vineyards now dot the vast area. Along the length of the corridor. sand has stopped advancing while cropland at the edge of the deserts has expanded, in some areas from one to five kilometers.
Measures used the corridor differ according to conditions. Where water is available, windbreak forests arc planted . In dry areas, windbreak walls made of clay, 50 centimetres high and 20 centimetres wide, built on sand dunes at one-meter intervals.
Plants that grow on deserts ( arenaceous shroubs), such as sacsaoul ( lloloxylon ammodendron) and the narrow-leaved oleaster ( Elacagnus angustlfolia), arc planted between the walls. ' There shrubs take root in three to five years.fixing the sand dunes.' Dr. Zhu said.
Another success story Is the sand -control project at Shapotou on the southern fringes of the Tengger Desert on the border of Inner Mongolia and Bansu province.
There trains have run without Interruption for 32 years on a 45 kilometer section of the Lanzhou-Baotou railway.
Because of this project built with plant stalks, the desert has been prevented from burying the railway, and oases have appeared along this transport artery in northwest China.
Techniques used In the Shapotou project arc simple. First, several rows of wood piles one metre apart arc erected two metres above ground on the north side of the designated area where wind threatens. Then, corn stalks or tree twigs arc tied between the piles, forming barriers against winds and advancing sand dunes.
Then south these barriers.
thousands of one-square -metre rectangles arc created, each bounded by a perimeter of wheat stalks. From the air the cover of woven straw on both sides of the railway resembles a huge chessboard.
Finally, within each of the square-metre spaces, one arenaceous shrub is planted. Upon naturing. the shrub replaces the wheal stalks and fixes the sand permanently.
When travellers pass through Shapotou by train, they find, against a yellow sea of sand dunes, grass and shrubs growing on both sides of the railroad.
A network of straw barriers, extending 700 metres from north to south and 16 kilomc tres from cast to west, protects the greenery.
An attraction to sand-con trol experts at home and abroad the Shapotou project has been visited by more than 600 experts from 30 countries since 1978.
They have given high praise." The project is striking and seems to work," says Dr. David Kcar, member of the U N Advisory Committee on Scicpcc and Technology for
development He visited i Shupotou last June.
Even as they fight against It, 1 scientists know the causes of the problem. ' The main cause of the rapid expansion of deserts In China Is undiscrim-inative felling of trees and shrubs for firewood.excessive grazing, and large-scale reclamation of sandy pastureland In the past decades. * Dr. Zhu said.
"Whut merits attention Is that all these economic activities have resulted from sharp population growth, which has Increased pressure on land resources.
An example Is the transitional region from farming to grazing between Inner Mongolia and Shanxi, Hebei and Liaoning provinces. Population growth In this region averages 3.08 per cent a year. As s result, farmers arc forced to reclaim pastureland for grain production even as herdsmen expand their flocks of sheep. Since the 1950s the -per sheep acreage of grassland has declined from 3.3 hectares to thb current less than one hectare.
" One measure to curb the expansion of deserts Is to ration land use. Dr. Zhu said ' In this transitional region, farmland, pastureland and forests should respectively account for one-third of the total land area.”
Because of China's success, International organisations, like the UN Environment Program and the UN Centre for Science and Technology DcvelopmcnL have run classes and seminars In China since 1973.
-Depthnews Features.