{"id":361131,"date":"2026-04-03T00:48:08","date_gmt":"2026-04-03T00:48:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/361131\/"},"modified":"2026-04-03T00:48:08","modified_gmt":"2026-04-03T00:48:08","slug":"china-is-trying-to-grow-new-forests-in-this-notorious-mega-desert-its-working","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/361131\/","title":{"rendered":"China Is Trying to Grow New Forests in This Notorious Mega-Desert. It\u2019s Working"},"content":{"rendered":"

Scientists have described<\/a> it as a \u201cbiological void\u201d or a \u201chyperarid environment.\u201d Across China, locals know<\/a> it as the \u201cSea of Death.\u201d But\u2014after five decades of ecological engineering\u2014the edges of northwestern China\u2019s 130,000 square-mile (337,000 square-kilometer) Taklamakan Desert is now slowly transforming into forests that absorb greenhouse gases.<\/p>\n

New research led by atmospheric physicist King-Fai Li at the University of California, Riverside, has corroborated the Chinese government\u2019s success in turning parts of this gigantic and reportedly<\/a> 25 million-year-old desert wasteland into an effective carbon sink. Li, along with colleagues at universities in Beijing, Houston, and California, assembled years of data from NASA\u2019s Orbiting Carbon Observatory (OCO) and its orbital MODIS imagers to track carbon dioxide concentrations and the progressing greenness around Taklamakan.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis is not like a rainforest in the Amazon or Congo,\u201d Li noted in a press statement<\/a>. \u201cSome afforested regions are only shrublands like Southern California\u2019s chaparral.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cBut the fact that they are drawing down CO2 at all, and doing it consistently,\u201d he added, \u201cis something positive we can measure and verify from space.\u201d<\/p>\n

China\u2019s 72-year plan <\/p>\n

The Chinese government has had cascading incentives to continue planting hardy shrubs and trees across the Taklamakan, the world\u2019s second-largest \u201cmobile desert\u201d or sand sea, ever since the project began in 1978.<\/p>\n

China\u2019s first goal was to stem the expansion of this vast desert itself by building a bulwark of forest that could be easily and naturally irrigated by high-elevation runoff\u2014like the seasonal snowmelt from the surrounding Kunlun Mountains to the south. As secondary benefits, the nation hoped to improve its agricultural conditions and ease political unrest from minority ethnic groups, including local Uyghur communities. In recent years, state-funded workers have also planted<\/a> along the Taklamakan\u2019s 340-mile (550-kilometer) Tarim Desert Highway\u2014part of China\u2019s Three-North Shelterbelt forest growth program,<\/a> which extends into 2050.<\/p>\n

That said, China has also pursued this program to increase its northern forest cover from 5.05% to 14.95% as an explicit contribution to the United Nations Strategic Plan for Forests. And it appears to be working.<\/p>\n

Li and his colleagues studied both seasonal and multiyear trends to determine if there has been a true reduction in regional carbon dioxide (CO2), based on NASA satellite sensor data tracking CO2 levels, vegetation cover, and weather behavior.<\/p>\n

Each year during the July to September wet season, the researchers found, the increasing vegetation consistently sucked up atmospheric CO2 by approximately three parts per million (ppm) compared to Taklamakan\u2019s hyperarid dry-season rates. To put this in context, if the entire Taklamakan desert were successfully blanketed in woodlands, it would be able to absorb roughly 60 million tons\u2014a lot, but admittedly only a minute fraction of the estimated 40 billion tons of carbon emitted globally per year.<\/p>\n

\"TaklamakanAbove, green regions measured by NASA\u2019s MODIS instrument data, collected via satellite, indicate a rate of increase in vegetation observed since 2000. Credit: Xun Jiang, King-Fai Li, et al., PNAS <\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019re not going to solve the climate crisis by planting trees in deserts alone,\u201d Li noted. \u201cBut understanding where and how much CO2 can be drawn down, and under what conditions, is essential.\u201d<\/p>\n

According to UC Riverside, China\u2019s afforestation project has also helped impede wind erosion, cutting down on the frequency and severity of sandstorms and protecting local farms as well.<\/p>\n

A model for \u2018the most extreme arid landscapes\u2019 <\/p>\n

Li and his team suggest that the Taklamakan Desert could serve as \u201ca model for climate change mitigation through nature-based solutions\u201d in \u201ceven the most extreme arid landscapes,\u201d as they wrote<\/a> in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS).<\/p>\n

One critical factor, according to Li, is successful long-term planning. A similar United Nations project to green the Sahara Desert failed\u2014the multibillion-dollar \u201cGreat Green Wall\u201d failed largely due to \u201climited political support, lack of money, weak organizational structures, and not enough consideration for the environment,\u201d according<\/a> to Voice of America.<\/p>\n

\"DesertAbove, a 2009 photo taken while crossing the Taklamakan Desert, along a highway that has been protected by China\u2019s years-long program to plant a buffer of brush. Credit: Dmitry Perstin via Flickr, Creative Commons 2.0 <\/p>\n

But China\u2019s efforts to beat back Taklamakan\u2019s vast and deadly sand sea, according to Li, have shown that even Earth\u2019s most barren wastelands can be marshaled in the battle to fight climate change.<\/p>\n

\u201cEven deserts are not hopeless,\u201d Li said. \u201cWith the right planning and patience, it is possible to bring life back to the land, and, in so doing, help us breathe a little easier.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Scientists have described it as a \u201cbiological void\u201d or a \u201chyperarid environment.\u201d Across China, locals know it as…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":361132,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[22],"tags":[190189,166443,607,390,273,111,139,69,147],"class_list":{"0":"post-361131","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-environment","8":"tag-afforestation","9":"tag-carbon-sinks","10":"tag-china","11":"tag-climate-change","12":"tag-environment","13":"tag-new-zealand","14":"tag-newzealand","15":"tag-nz","16":"tag-science"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/361131","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=361131"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/361131\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/361132"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=361131"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=361131"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=361131"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}