The Taklamakan Desert, the largest, driest desert in China, located in the Tarim Basin of China’s arid region, has been undergoing a greenery facelift spanning multiple decades. Reuters reports that since 1978, the “Three-North Shelterbelt” project, also known as the Great Green Wall, has planted more than 116,000 square miles of trees and plants. The project has been experimenting with different plant species to find the most hardy to help bring China’s total forest coverage up to 25%. In a YouTube video posted about innovation projects in China, the vision and incredible progress made in the Taklamakan Desert, often called “the sea of death,” is brought to life.
The video describes a herculean effort to grow and cultivate the longest man-made desert shield on Earth. At a distance of almost 1,900 miles, it’s designed to stabilize the shifting sands, minimize desert expansion, reduce sand storm pollution and damage, and create farmland for food and jobs.
The Three-North Shelterbelt Forest Program is a 70-year initiative that’s using cutting edge technology to battle an enormous desert and complicated environmental issues. China Daily reports drones can carry more than 10 seedlings per trip and approach difficult cliff areas. These precise plantings are all part of improving efficiency over traditional forest planting that minimizes harm to the existing environment. With AI-powered robots taking more crucial steps in the expansion of green spaces, projects like this aim to tackle an ever-growing and concerning environmental crisis.
Still, the program has shown results less than expected. A study reported in Taylor & Francis found that “forest is less suitable for large-scale afforestation in sandy land, for it has relatively lower stand establishment rate, higher degradation rate, and less contribution to desertification reduction.” It went on to suggest more successful afforestation, tree planting, and creating new tree cover to combat desertification and erosion would be accomplished by adjusting the vegetation types to match local conditions. Moving away from trees and focusing on a mix of shrubland and grasslands, as well as focused socio-economic strategies for limiting human disturbances, would do the most good.
MDPI reported that the project has faced many challenges. Pest and disease problems have been a continual nuisance, and water resources are limited. But challenges bring solutions such as the vigorous development of water-saving resources, emphasis on biodiversity and species diversity, and improved techniques for natural restoration and artificial repair.
China is not alone in their attempts to adjust to environmental challenges and expanding inhospitable deserts. UN environment programme reports the African Union launched the “Great Green Wall” in 2007 to slow the Sahara Desert from spreading and transform millions of lives by creating productive landscapes across 11 countries. Over an incredible 44 million acres of degraded land has been restored.
The Gulf EcoLife writes about regenerative agriculture in the Saudi Arabian desert saying, “Packman and the Beduin planted ten species of trees, 4,000 in all. Most ultimately didn’t survive, but enough did to give reasonable hope for a green landscape providing foraging for bees and animals, windbreak, seeds from which to extract oil, charcoal, and soil improvement through fixing of nitrogen.”
MDPI reports, “Land degradation and desertification (LDD) are the main reasons for the rapid changes that are affecting the majority of the earth’s drylands, resulting in an overall loss of habitats and changes in vegetation cover, plant composition and diversity, hydrologic conditions, and soil properties.” It’s crucial that these environmental projects use all the technology available, but also plan smarter and more strategically. Building up green environmental walls to protect a rapidly growing and spreading desert is fantastic, but, utilizing the naturally growing grasses instead of planting massive forest trees that require unsustainable water resources is required to redirect poorly utilized assets.
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