China has launched a new offensive on desertification in western Xinjiang Uygur autonomous region, deploying the same technology used on the moon to help safeguard food security.
Last month, several projects involving sand control, desertification prevention, and wind erosion and salinity management were launched at the Chinese Academy of Sciences’ Xinjiang Institute of Ecology and Geography (XIEG).
The projects are meant to help the region build an ecological barrier to protect the region’s arable land from erosion and desertification, according to a report last month by Science and Technology Daily, the official newspaper of the Ministry of Science and Technology.
Xinjiang is one of the main sites of China’s “great green wall”, a massive project to prevent desertification or the degradation of fertile land into arid desert-like land due to climate variations and human activity.
This includes surrounding the Taklamakan Desert – China’s largest desert and the second-largest sand-shifting desert in the world – with a green belt that includes drought-tolerant plants and sand-fixing technologies such as straw grids.
Among the new technologies being deployed to battle desertification at the edge of the Taklamakan Desert are six environmentally friendly materials for sand control.