This aerial drone file photo taken on Sept 6, 2023 shows the border area between the Tengger Desert and a sand-controlling forest belt in Zhongwei, Northwest China's Ningxia Hui autonomous region. [Photo/Xinhua]
YINCHUAN -- From employing biotechnological techniques to deploying a range of AI-powered automated machines, China has actively embraced innovations to replace strenuous manual labor in its efforts to build ecological barriers against desertification.
Tuesday marked World Day to Combat Desertification and Drought. Often described as the "cancer of the earth," desertification is a global challenge affecting more than 100 countries and regions. China, one of the countries most severely impacted, has made significant strides in halting desert expansion through its decades-long afforestation campaign.
Tang Ximing, a senior engineer at a state-owned forestry farm in Zhongwei, demonstrates an upgraded electric seedling planter invented by himself in Northwest China's Ningxia Hui autonomous region, June 1, 2024. [Photo/Xinhua]
Winding through towering sand dunes along the edge of the Tengger Desert, China's fourth-largest, the Lanzhou-Baotou Railway, built in 1958, has not only remained well-maintained and free from encroaching sand over the decades but has also helped transform the barren landscape. Its shelter belts have fostered the growth of biocrust, bringing new life to the once-desolate land.
The green belt protecting this vital transport artery stands as a near-miracle in the arid landscape. Over the past 60 years, massive human efforts have been mobilized in Zhongwei city, in Northwest China's Ningxia Hui autonomous region, to create "straw checkerboard," a dune stabilization technique where straw is laid out in a checkerboard pattern on the desert surface. These grids have provided a foundation for vegetation to take root and gradually transform the sand into green.
Nicknamed the "Chinese Rubik's Cube," the technique is now widely adopted both across China and internationally to increase soil surface roughness, effectively reducing wind erosion in sandy areas.
Workers build straw checkerboards in the Tengger Desert, in Zhongwei of Northwest China's Ningxia Hui autonomous region, May 30, 2024. [Photo/Xinhua]
Within the checkerboards, the sand surface gradually forms a soil crust that helps prevent wind-driven movement. To speed up this process, Chinese researchers have developed lab-cultured cyanobacteria that accelerate the formation of biological soil crusts.
"Under natural conditions, the formation of biological soil crusts takes 10 to 20 years. With the application of cyanobacteria, that process can be shortened to just one year," said Zhao Yang, a researcher at the Northwest Institute of Eco-Environment and Resources under the Chinese Academy of Sciences.
Zhao added that the technology has already been applied across more than 267 hectares in Ningxia, with plans to further expand its coverage in the coming years.
By spraying cyanobacterial liquid onto the sand surface and combining it with the straw checkerboard technique, stable artificial biological soil crusts can form within 10 to 16 months. In treated areas, wind erosion has been reduced by over 95 percent, the survival rate of sand-fixing shrubs has increased by 10 to 15 percent, and the need for seedling replacement has dropped by nearly 40 percent, significantly cutting the overall cost of sand control, Zhao explained.
This photo taken on Nov 4, 2024 shows a chamber for accelerated seed breeding at M-Grass Ecological Environment (Group) Co., Ltd. in Hohhot, North China's Inner Mongolia autonomous region. [Photo/Xinhua]
China initiated the Three-North Shelterbelt Forest Program in 1978 to combat desertification across the northwest, north and northeast of the country. The world's largest afforestation project is still undergoing.
Currently, 53 percent of China's treatable sandy land has been effectively managed through afforestation. The country is not only the first in the world to achieve "zero growth" in land degradation and a "double reduction" in desertified and sandy land areas, but has also transformed its role from a recipient of international desertification control aid to a key contributor to global ecological governance.
Tang said the forestry farm receives many foreign visitors each year, eager to learn sand prevention and control techniques. He recently demonstrated how to create straw checkerboards and use his electric drilling tool to plant saplings for a group of guests from Mongolia.