Xinhua Headlines: China's desertification control efforts embrace high-tech solutions

* Technology is accelerating China's desertification control efforts, which are shifting from labor-intensive planting methods to innovative strategies powered by advanced technologies and intelligent machine fleets.

* 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.

* China has transformed its role from a recipient of international desertification control aid to a key contributor to global ecological governance.

YINCHUAN, June 18 (Xinhua) -- 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.

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.

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.

Tang Ximing, chief engineer at the Zhongwei state-owned forestry farm, recalled that with summer ground temperatures as high as 70 degrees Celsius, survival rates of saplings planted in decades ago were just over 40 percent. But the planting efforts have never been baffled.

In 2023, Tang developed an electric drilling device that allows workers to plant saplings into a 50-centimeter-deep layer of moist sand within the checkerboards in under 10 seconds. Previously, even skilled forestry workers needed three to four minutes to dig a single tree pit manually.

Technology is accelerating China's desertification control efforts, which are shifting from labor-intensive planting methods to innovative strategies powered by advanced technologies and intelligent machine fleets.

Ordos City in north China's Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region has introduced an integrated smart system that combines remote-controlled desertification monitoring with real-time data from satellite imagery, drone surveys, and ground sensors. This system enables precise tracking of dynamic indicators such as vegetation coverage and soil moisture levels of afforested areas.

Meanwhile, in the green belt surrounding the Hunshandake Sandland -- the nearest desert threat to Beijing -- planting machines continuously shuttle back and forth, laying checkerboards and sowing grass seeds, making desert afforestation as efficient as plowing farmland.

"Creating straw barriers and sowing grass seeds were once two separate manual steps in sand-fixing planting. Now, the new machine combines both processes," said Wang Lei, director of the intelligent equipment research institute of the Inner Mongolia-based M-Grass Ecological Environment (Group) Co., Ltd.

He added that these intelligent devices outperform manual labor by more than 20 times in terms of work efficiency.

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.

China has actively fulfilled its commitments under the United Nations Convention to Combat Desertification by establishing the International Knowledge Management Center on Combating Desertification in Ningxia in December 2019. The center aims to share China's expertise and experience in desertification control with countries worldwide.

During a visit to Mongolia, Tang saw that the country lacks seedling nurseries. However, it has leveraged its geographical proximity to China's Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region to support seedling cultivation.

In 2024, Inner Mongolia exported a total of 2.8 million saplings to Mongolia, with exports expected to soar to 10 million this year for the green building in Mongolia.

Zhang Tianliang, a seedling exporter based in Xilingol League, Inner Mongolia, noted that his company recently exported species such as larch, spruce and golden-leaf elm. These trees are highly adaptable to dry, poor soils and severe cold, making them well-suited for cultivation in Mongolia, Zhang explained.

(Reporting by Fang Ning, Liu Hai, Ma Sijia, Halina, Yu Jia; video reporters: Feng Kaihua, Ma Sijia, Halina; video editors: Zhang Yichi, Zhu Cong)■