Most people have the impression that the desert environment is extremely harsh, with the hot sun all day long in addition to the loamy soil.
However, as one of the four deserts in China, 80% of the Mawwusu Desert is vibrant and green.
So, how did the Mawsud Desert form? And how did it become an "oasis"?
The formation of the Mawwusu Desert
Mawusu Desert is located between Yulin in Shaanxi Province and Ordos in Inner Mongolia, with an altitude of about 1100m - 1300m. In the Mongolian language, "Mawusu" means a place where no grass grows.
As one of the four major deserts in China, it covers an area of about 42,200 square kilometers, which is larger than the area of Hainan Island. However, Maowusu is not a natural desert, but was gradually formed under the impetus of man.
According to the records, in the fifth century AD, this area was a paradise for nomads, known as the "Pearl of the Seaside", with sufficient water and abundant forage, where the Huns lived and worked happily.
However, as the population continues to grow, people cultivate grasslands without restraint, and the war-torn daily routine exacerbates ecological deterioration, soil erosion becomes more and more serious, surface vegetation becomes less and less, and quicksand becomes more and more frequent.
At the same time, climate change has caused a decrease in precipitation and an increasingly severe wind and sand phenomenon.
Human factors coupled with climate change have led to an increasingly low vegetation cover here. It has been very difficult for people to survive, and they have no time to care about what consequences environmental changes will bring, gradually developing into a place forgotten by time and history.
In the Tang Dynasty, sand accumulation began to occur, as recorded in the New Book of Tang.
" In October of the second year of Changqing, the wind in Xiazhou was so strong that the flying sand was piled up as high as the battlements of the city".
During the Song Dynasty, the Mawusu Desert spread to the south side of the Wuding River and desertification became more and more serious, gradually spreading to the southeast during the Yuan and Ming Dynasties and developing to the line of the Great Wall of Yansui.
By the Qing Dynasty, the area had become a vast and endless desert, with a tendency to invade south across the Great Wall.
Until the early founding of New China, only 0.9% of Yulin's vegetation cover was left and as many as 1.2 million mu of farmland and pastures were swallowed by drifting sand, about 412 villages were buried by wind and sand, and the annual output of Yellow River sediment to Yulin was as much as 530 million tons.
In this way, Mao Wusu from a fertile grass and water, the oasis of sheep and goats, turned into a vast desert, whenever the wind is gusty, is the yellow sand rolling, covering the sky.
Surrounding areas are "people's livelihood" - salinization of land, sandy pastures, serious soil erosion, etc., seriously affecting the normal life of people, many people have to go far away from home in order to live.
How much work has gone into turning the desert into an oasis?
With the increasing extent of the Mawwusu Desert, desert management became a matter of urgency, and in 1959, the new China decided to formally launch a project to transform the desert.
The transformation of the Mawusu Desert is much easier compared to the Taklamakan Desert.
First of all, the area is relatively small. Although Mao Wusu is one of the four major deserts in China, it is relatively small, only 1/8 of the Taklamakan Desert, and will be less difficult to manage.
Secondly, the Mawwusu Desert was a livestock pasture before the desertification, with natural climatic and precipitation advantages. With the addition of geographical location, plants are more likely to survive, and the treatment is less difficult while the effectiveness will be relatively obvious.
In order to restore the ecology as soon as possible, the state has issued many relevant policies and requirements, actively coordinating and regulating materials, starting to work together to build windbreaks, and actively bringing in water to drain the silt from the sand.
The people responded positively to the national call and voluntarily joined the ranks of the desert transformation project, down-to-earth and willing to work without fear of hardship!
54 young girls with an average age of only 18 volunteered to join the Mending River Women's Militia Sand Control Company to start reforestation activities at the Black Wind Mouth of the Mending River, where sand and wind erosion are most serious.
An ordinary peasant girl named "Yin Yuzhen" once made a vow that she would rather die of exhaustion from planting trees than be bullied to death by the sand.
For more than 30 years, she and her husband together planted more than 2 million trees, opened up 3 simple roads in the vast desert, successfully constructed more than 50,000 mu of anti-sand barriers, and relied on a passion and 30 persistence to harden the 70,000 mu of desert into an oasis, admirable!
Similarly, there is also insisted on planting trees for more than 40 years Shi Guangyin, in order to plant trees, he is in debt, up to more than 10 million.
Shi Guangyin has contracted 300,000 mu of desert together with the surrounding farmers, planting nearly 30 million trees over the past 40 years, building a 100-kilometer-long green barrier; "Desert Ambition" based on Shi Guangyin won the Platinum Remy Award at the 50th Houston International Film Festival!
In addition to them, there are countless heroes of tree planting who have only one goal from the beginning to the end: to turn the desert into an oasis and return a clean land for human survival, because they love the land and their own survival home.
Through unremitting efforts, Yulin has gradually reduced the desert area with an annual reversal rate of 1.62%, and if the trees planted are spaced at one-meter intervals, they can circle the equator 54 times.
At the beginning of the 21st century, more than 6 million mu of sandy land was turned into an oasis, occupying 80% of the entire Mauwusu Desert; the annual sand transport of the Yellow River was reduced by 400 million tons compared to the previous one; and the dusty weather was reduced from more than 20 days per year to less than 10 days!
So far, Mawusu Desert may become the first disappearing desert in China!
The Director-General of the United Nations Organization to Combat Desertification affirmed.
China deserves the world's tribute on the issue of managing the Mauwusu Desert!
Behind such high praise are countless tree planting heroes who have persevered for decades, and they deserve it!
In view of past experience, we should respect nature and learn to live in harmony with it, and not to increase environmental pressure for our own selfish desires, or we may lose more than we gain.
