In recent years, our country has made great progress in ecological management, controlling previously formed soil desertification and desertification conditions, and is committed to turning these original deserts and deserts into oases.

In recent years, our country has made great progress in ecological management, controlling previously formed soil desertification and desertification conditions, and is committed to turning these original deserts and deserts into oases. The most representative project among them is the Mu Us Desert . After hard work, the Chinese people gradually conquered this sandy land. It has also become the first desert in my country to disappear. is also the first in the world. The desert has been completely conquered by humans. How did our people achieve this great conquest?

The past and present life of the Mu Us Desert

The Mu Us Desert is located north of the Great Wall of Yulin, Shaanxi Province. It is one of the four major sandy lands in my country. This sandy land covers an area of ​​more than 0,000 square kilometers. This place used to be extremely short of water, not a blade of grass could grow, and the natural environment was very harsh, making it unsuitable for human survival and habitation. Moreover, the desertification and desertification here also affect the sand and dust conditions in the entire northern region. Under the action of the winter monsoon, it brings sandstorms that cover the sky and the sun.

However, the Mu Us Desert in history was once an oasis. In the pre-Qin period, this place was the political and economic center of the Huns. "On the Passing of Qin" once recorded that when the Qin Dynasty general Meng Tian led an army to expel the Xiongnu, he incorporated the Mu Us Desert into the territory of our country. After that, Qin Shihuang ordered a large number of inland residents to move to Mu Us to promote local agricultural development and guard the borders.

After the fall of the Qin Dynasty, Emperor Wu of the Han Dynasty re-established 115 counties in the Mu Us area, moved 100,000 residents from the interior, and also established the Mu Us area as a military fortress. After decades of hard work by the army and civilians of the Han Dynasty, the Mu Us area became a real "fortress south of the Yangtze River", providing the Han Dynasty with a large amount of food, and the local economic development level was very high. At this time, the Mu Us area reached reached the pinnacle of ecological and economic development.

Starting from and of the Eastern Han Dynasty, the Mu Us area began to decline. At this time, the Mu Us area entered a dry and cold period that lasted for hundreds of years. The local precipitation decreased significantly, and the temperature also dropped. It became more and more difficult to grow food, and the yield also continued to decline. Residents living nearby had to leave their homes. , left Maowusu, who had lived for many years.

During the Sui and Tang Dynasties, under the conditions of stability and prosperity, Mu Us gradually regained a little vitality, and human life gradually recovered. But the good times did not last long. By the end of the Tang Dynasty, the pace of desertification in the Mu Us area was getting faster and faster, and it was difficult to delay it with the technical level at that time. The thickness of the sand at that time had been accumulated to be almost as high as the city wall.

Since the 9th century AD, desertification here has been unstoppable. On the one hand, this is related to the decrease in local precipitation and desert invasion. On the other hand, the uncontrolled deforestation by local residents has also accelerated desertification in the Mu Us area. After hundreds of years of development and war, the Mu Us area had completely turned into a desert during the Ming and Qing Dynasties. After the founding of New China, the local government began to notice the major hazards of the Mu Us Desert. Even Yulin City was surrounded by the desert at that time. The government gradually put the management of the Mu Us Desert on the agenda.

How to conquer the Mu Us Desert?

Since 1959, the national and local governments have invested a lot of manpower and material resources to start the management of the Mu Us Desert. In the early days, adopted methods such as building windbreaks, diversion of water to remove sand, and diversion of floods to silt the Mu Us Desert, and achieved certain results. Later, private desert control forces also participated in the management of the Mu Us Desert. They created more than 160 forestlands of more than 10,000 acres in the hinterland of the Mu Us Desert, and built 4 large forest protection belts with a total length of more than 1,500 kilometers. The afforestation area of ​​the entire Mu Us Desert exceeds 15 million acres, which has also increased the forest and grass coverage rate of the Mu Us Desert from less than 1% to 5%.

After the continuous efforts of generations of sand control people, after entering the 21st century, more than 6 million acres of sandy land have been effectively controlled, more than 85% of the Mu Us Desert has been controlled, and the annual water and soil erosion has also been reduced. For Yellow River The amount of sand transported by has been reduced by 400 million tons, and 1.7 million acres of farmland have been newly reclaimed.

As of 2020, the governance rate of the Mu Us Desert has reached more than 93%, which means that humans have basically conquered this desert. Since people have accumulated valuable experience in managing the Mu Us Desert and gained great confidence after defeating the Mu Us Desert, why not apply the successful experience to the management of the Taklimakan Desert ?

The significantly different Taklimakan Desert

The Taklimakan Desert is located in the center of the Tarim Basin in Xinjiang. It is the largest desert in my country, and the Taklimakan Desert is very mobile and has a fast moving speed. It is the second largest mobile desert in the world. . Deep in the Taklimakan Desert, my country's northwest inland receives very little influence from the maritime monsoon. Therefore, the Taklimakan Desert is located in an environment with very little precipitation. The average annual precipitation does not exceed 100 millimeters. In some areas of the desert, the precipitation is even Less than a few millimeters, but the average evaporation volume is as high as about 3000 millimeters.

At the same time, the Taklimakan Desert is very mobile, with fine sand particles. The average height of the dunes is about 300 meters. Strong winds can even raise sand walls hundreds of meters high, which also speeds up its expansion. It is even more difficult to govern.

The Mu Us Desert was an oasis for a period of time in history, which means that the Mu Us Desert area had relatively sufficient rainfall, and most of the formation of the Mu Us Desert was caused by natural causes such as over-logging and over-grazing by local residents. The impact is smaller. However, the formation of the Taklimakan Desert is almost entirely caused by natural causes human factors have little impact on the formation of the Taklimakan Desert.

The successful management of the Mu Us Desert mostly depends on generations of people who have continued to tree planting and management of the Mu Us Desert. . If the experience of tree planting is applied to the Taklimakan Desert, what kind of effect will there be?

Planting trees in the Taklimakan Desert will not only not improve its ecological environment, but will also exacerbate the ecological crisis in the Taklimakan Desert. The successful management experience of the Mu Us Desert tells us that as long as we achieve 70% vegetation coverage, we can basically achieve desert control.

However, the Taklimakan Desert is completely different from the Mu Us Desert. The water content in its soil is not enough to support the survival of such a large-scale tree. Planting trees in the Taklimakan Desert will allow the trees to absorb the little moisture in the original soil into their trunks, and then Through the transpiration of leaves, is lost to the atmosphere, eventually leading to the death of trees, lower water content in the desert, and a vicious cycle of more severe desertification .

Therefore, for deserts such as the Taklimakan Desert formed by natural causes, we cannot simply use afforestation to manage it. If the wrong management method is used, it will intensify the degree of local desertification. At present, people do not have a good way to manage the Taklimakan Desert. They can only slow down the movement of the moving sand dunes as much as possible and reduce the erosion of the land by the sand dunes.

So the best management method is to try every means to stop the advancement of sand dunes and protect the original good land. Now the local government is building shelterbelts and windbreaks around the Taklimakan Desert to reduce the speed of sand dunes and minimize the impact of desertification on human normal production and life. At the same time, through the protection of windbreaks, the impact of sandstorms on the city is reduced.

Through comparative research, we found that the governance of the Mu Us Desert and the governance of the Taklimakan Desert are two completely different governance models. If blindly copies , it will intensify the degree of desertification in the Taklimakan Desert. Therefore, must be combined with reality and should be realistic. , cannot be copied and abused blindly. Moreover, the desert is also rich in oil, gas and solar resources. By fully utilizing these resources, the desert can also be "turned into treasure".

Author: Yaya Proofreading Editor: Weiyang