China has a vast area, but it is also one of the countries with larger desert areas in the world. Test results from the my country Forestry Administration from 2005 to the end of 2009 show that my country’s desertification area occupies 2.6237 million square kilometers, and the desertified land area is 1.7311 million square kilometers. Every second, 78 square meters of our country are swallowed up by desertification, and the earth around the desert is plagued by sand and dust weather.
In order to improve my country's desertified land, In 2016 Jack Ma promised to spend huge sums of money to plant 100 million trees in the desert every year. Now, six years later, what is happening to these trees?
One hundred million trees per year, has it been achieved?
"You save energy to plant a tree in the ant forest, and we will plant a real tree in the desert."
After this commitment, everyone joined the tree planting activity one after another. In just a few There are as many as 200 million users who have activated the "tree planting" function every month. If everyone planted one tree a year, there would be 200 million trees, an astonishing number!
Ant Forest was officially launched in August 2016. As of January 2017, more than 1.11 million real trees had been planted. In May 2018, more than 55.52 million real trees had been planted. By May 2022, a total of 11 real trees have been planted in Gansu and Inner Mongolia. A total of 326 million trees have been planted in the province, covering an area of more than 3.97 million acres.
html In less than 16 years, more than 300 million trees have been planted, with an average of over 55 million trees planted every year. Although it does not reach the number of 100 million trees a year, it is still an astonishing number. It is not easy to plant trees in the desert, and it is not easy to actually do it.
How difficult is it to plant trees in the desert?
When it comes to planting trees, you may think it is very simple. Take a sapling, dig a hole in the ground, plant the sapling and water it. But it is much more difficult to plant a tree in the desert.
In 2017, the "Million Forest Plan" launched a tree planting project in the Alxa Desert of Inner Mongolia. The person in charge recalled that the first batch of trees planted by were all dead, and not a single one was alive.
plant a tree, it is not difficult to say the two words gently, but it is difficult to successfully plant a tree in the desert. People who have participated in tree planting in the desert said, "The blowing wind is wrapped in fine sand, hitting the face, and blowing into the eye sockets like needles." The harsh environment makes tree planting the biggest problem.
In order to return the desertified land to green, people are not afraid of hardship and are not afraid of tiredness. Braving the high temperature of nearly 40 degrees, we planted seeds and saplings of hope in the desert under the scorching sun. But the most frightening thing is that it is the most uncomfortable to see a sapling that you planted slowly dying in the desert.
Only if you have planted trees in the desert yourself can you know how difficult it is to plant trees in the desert. The biggest difficulty to overcome is the lack of rainfall.
Ant Forest has also launched a planting plan in Alxa Desert . If you want to plant trees in the desert, you must do the basic work before planting trees.
First, we need to build a basic road in the desert. After the road is built, we need to connect electricity and dig wells. The saplings are irrigated by drilling wells to extract groundwater, allowing the saplings to survive. After the well is dug, good irrigation equipment needs to be laid. Only after the dry desert is watered can the trees be planted.
One well irrigates a very wide range. Planters say that if they want to plant living trees, they have to divert water from wells more than ten kilometers away to the planting area to irrigate the planted saplings. Only in this way can the saplings survive after being planted.
After planting, you need to check the survival rate of the saplings every once in a while. If the sapling dies, it needs to be replanted again. Sometimes, just a few days after planting a tree, a sudden sandstorm occurs and the planted saplings are uprooted. They need to be replanted repeatedly to achieve an 80% survival rate.
Surviving saplings require a lot of time and energy to water and maintain to ensure that they can thrive. It sounds easy, but it is actually a huge project.
Desert planting is so difficult. Six years later, what is the current status of the trees that Jack Ma promised to plant?
6 years have passed, what happened to the trees planted?
A reporter arrived at the Alxa League 77 planting site for on-site inspection. What he saw through the camera was a deserted area, and there seemed to be no saplings. Is planting trees just a gimmick and not real?
This is not the case. If you look closely, you can see a Haloxylon ammodendron tree at regular intervals. It's just that these small Haloxylon ammodendron trees grow too small. A sapling is less than 80 centimeters. It is indeed difficult to see them from a distance. Since the Haloxylon ammodendron tree is a clumping plant, it looks like a weed at a close distance. It is difficult to imagine that it is a tree.
When I go to see the Haloxylon ammodendron tree in winter, it looks like a desert at first glance, with "desert color" everywhere. The Haloxylon ammodendron tree looks like a pile of hay at this time, as if it is "dead". But don’t panic. In fact, this is a normal phenomenon. In spring and summer, the Haloxylon ammodendron tree will return to green.
From the aerial photos, we can clearly see the changes in planting. The desert where Haloxylon ammodendron trees have been planted is green, forming a sharp contrast with the desert areas without planting. The desert is no longer an endless expanse of yellow, but has become a vibrant scene.
Because the environment in the desert is so harsh, the trees grow very slowly after they are planted. After being planted for several years, the Haloxylon ammodendron trees are only about the height of a human being, and some trees are not even as tall as a human being. It must be said that there is still a long way to go to green the desert.
A local driver in Alxa said that in the past, when the wind blew in spring and autumn, the sky would be filled with yellow sand, making it impossible to go out. With the successful implementation of the desert tree planting plan, the current environment has been significantly improved, and there is no longer rolling yellow sand.
It is too difficult to plant a tree in the desert area. It rarely rains a few times a year, and a tree will dry up and die soon. There are indeed not many species that can survive in the desert, and the Haloxylon ammodendron tree is one of them. The Haloxylon ammodendron tree is also one of the most planted species. Why do everyone like to plant Haloxylon ammodendron trees?
Haloxylon ammodendron tree, desert savior
In addition to the Haloxylon ammodendron tree being the species with the least energy requirements, there are many other objective factors . First of all, Haloxylon ammodendron tree seeds germinate the fastest and have super vitality. Drop some water on the Haloxylon ammodendron tree seeds, and the seeds will germinate in just 2-3 hours. Only in this way can they adapt to the dry desert environment.
Different from ordinary trees, the Haloxylon ammodendron tree loves light and can withstand a high temperature of 43 degrees and a severe cold of -40 degrees. Ordinary trees will wither and die quickly after leaving water, but the Haloxylon ammodendron tree can survive tenaciously in the arid desert. It is not difficult for it in a desert with an annual precipitation of 25-200 ml.
In addition, Haloxylon ammodendron trees can quickly multiply into patches in the harsh environment of the desert, adding vitality to the boundless Gobi Desert. The roots of a Haloxylon ammodendron tree can grow to 10 meters long and can anchor 10 square meters of desert.
In addition to the Haloxylon ammodendron tree, other varieties suitable for desert planting include elm, caragana, Pinus sylvestris, Salix , Flower stick , Populus euphratica and other varieties. A Populus euphratica tree can grow to a height of 10-15 meters and can survive for more than 200 years. It takes up to 10-20 years to grow to a height of more than 10 meters.
It is easy to plant a tree, but the most difficult thing is the later management and maintenance. According to a survey, the survival rate of Haloxylon ammodendron trees planted in Ant Forest is as high as 78%, far exceeding initial expectations. If we continue to persevere, I believe that in a few years, ten years or longer, it will be just around the corner that all deserts will become oases.
China's desertification hazards have existed for a long time. Wind and sand have caused endless problems such as burying surface buildings and ports, damaging roads, and destroying crops.
On the coast of Dongshan Island, Fujian, 13 villages and nearly 1,300 hm2 of fertile land have been buried by wind and sand in the past century. On the coast of Haimen, Chaoyang, Guangdong, 14 villages have been buried by wind and sand in the past 50 years.. The most fundamental reason for the increasingly serious desertification in our country is deforestation.
Mountains of gold and silver are not as good as clear waters and green mountains. It must be said that Jack Ma does have an overall view of the tree planting, and its impact is also very far-reaching. I hope more people will join in afforestation and start with small things around them to travel low-carbon. A small step for everyone is a big step for improving the environment.
References:
Review of research on China's coastal sandy landforms in the past 40 years - Dong Yuxiang 2022-01-15
Long desert - green project - Zhu Yongjie 2018-11-15
Planting elm trees with desert drip irrigation - controlling land desertification - Zhu Yongjun 2011-10-25
Author: Yijun Reviewer: Xiaoyang Proofreading Editor: Li Zi
