Is it possible for the Mu Us Desert to turn into grassland or forest?

The Maowusu Desert is one of the four major sandy lands in China, also known as the Ordos Sandy Land. It is located at the junction of Shaanxi and Inner Mongolia provinces, with a total area of ​​42,200 square kilometers. The sky is full of flying sand and the desert is vast.

Since 1959, people have vigorously built windbreaks, diverted water and sand, and diverted floods to silt land, launching a huge project to transform the desert. Today, most of the Maowusu Desert has been managed, and water and soil are no longer lost. Due to good rainfall, many sandy lands have now become forests, grasslands and fertile fields. Yulin has gradually moved from a "desert capital" to a "desert oasis." However, it is still too early to completely eliminate the desert. Today, let's talk about the management of the Maowusu Desert.

01. Has the Mu Us Desert been destroyed?

In fact, the governance of the Maowusu Desert is still a long way to go, and it is far from being eliminated. Research has also confirmed that the restoration of the Maowusu Desert is actually the result of the right time, right place and right people (climate change plus the national ecological restoration project, it is by no means a single factor.)

It just so happens that Associate Researcher Xu Zhiwei from the School of Geography and Oceanography of Nanjing University published a study on the greening development of the Maowusu Desert in 2018, which I think can be used as a good reference (Teacher Xu has been working on the front line of the Maowusu Desert for a long time, and he is a professional, so he can meet the common requirements of netizens for academic qualifications and practice . Participants also include Professor Lu Huayu, a Yangtze River Scholar, Professor Wu Shuangye of the "Siyuan Lecture", and Professor Joseph A. Mason of the Department of Geography at the University of Wisconsin, USA):

Article title:

Recent greening (1981-2013) in the Mu Us dune field, north-central China, and its potential causes

Academic journal "Land Degradation & Development" (Top journal in the first zone in the fields of soil science, environmental science, and agriculture and forestry science, with an impact factor of 9.787.)

02. Desert control

The conclusion is as follows:

1: The restoration of the Maowusu Desert is a long-term event. In the past three decades, the ecological environment of the Maowusu Desert has been recovering, the sand dunes have become more fixed, and the vegetation coverage has increased.

The above shows the changes in the vegetation index of Maowusu, Normalized Difference Vegetation Index (NDVI). It can be seen that its greening is recovering overall. It has shown a recovery trend since the 1970s until now, so it is not caused by short-term behavior.

The following figure shows the results of vegetation restoration in the Maowusu Desert calculated by two methods from 1980 to 2013. The results are consistent.

2: The reversal of the Maowusu Desert is related to overall climate change, especially the weakening of wind speed and interannual precipitation changes.

The image of local climate factors is shown in the figure. From 1970 to the present, it can be seen that the local climate is generally changing ( climate is not something that humans can control in the short term)

Specific examples include:

Effect of temperature

The influence of annual precipitation

3: Major national ecological restoration projects that have been widely implemented in recent years, including desertification prevention and control, returning farmland to forest (grass), the construction of the Three Norths Shelterbelt System, and grazing bans and rest measures, have played an important and positive role in the ecological environment restoration in my country's northern region.

In general, desert control cannot be achieved overnight; it is a long process.

ref: Xu, Z., Hu, R., Wang, K., Mason, JA, Wu, S.-Y., & Lu, H. (2018). Recent greening (1981-2013) in the Mu Us dune field, north-central China, and its potential causes. Land Degradation & Development, 29(5), 1509–1520.