Globally, red alert zones are showing the world their expanding territory, and China, the world's largest desertification area and the largest number of people affected, has reached the national level. We have to wonder what is the key to success in resolving this major crisis
First of all, let us recognize that human beings are responsible for the serious desertification of the land. As early as the agricultural period, due to over-cultivation and indiscriminate logging, land resources were over-utilized, and a large amount of land nutrients were lost, which evolved into a vast wasteland. China, which has been dominated by agriculture since ancient times, can be said to have suffered from it, and the depth of desertification can be seen.
However, China and the broad masses of people have not sat idly by, and China has attached great importance to the problem of desertification since the founding of New China. China and its people have also actively participated in the process of desertification control, especially in recent years, China has made a lot of progress in the prevention and control of desertification, which has attracted widespread attention from the world. What's even more remarkable is that China has also developed a product that is known as"A monster that devours the sand"The equipment has won the attention of our country's officials with its amazing sand control effect, and its improved robotic arm can go deep into the desert and prevent the spread of desertification in various ways, becoming the best choice for desert control.
In addition, China has also taken measures to prevent further land desertification by improving the ecological environment and protecting water resources, such as those carried out by China"The project of returning farmland to forest and grassland"with"Greenery and humidification action"Wait. These measures are beginning to show tangible results, and the data on desertification is showing a downward trend in all aspects, which undoubtedly brings great hope to the whole of China and the world.
The northern part of the country suffers from a dry climate and raging sandstorms. For example, the Taklamakan Desert, which runs through 1,000 kilometers wide and stretches for 400 kilometers, has a total area of about 330,000 square kilometers, which is almost the same as the area of China's inland provinces. Since the 50s of the last century, ** has been committed to the implementation of the sand barrier program. In the beginning, the main method was large-scale afforestation at the edge of the desert to stop the continuous expansion of the desert. However, this traditional method of afforestation has great limitations, and it has extremely high requirements for tree species, and it is necessary to find areas with abundant groundwater for planting, otherwise the survival rate of saplings will be greatly reduced. As a result, the first more common species of choice include low shrubs such as sea buckthorn and scorching rhizome.
Considering the difficulty and inefficiency of tree planting technology, even though China has successfully planted more than 660 billion trees over the past 40 years, the overall management effect is still unsatisfactory. In order to achieve the desired effect of the sand control barrier plan, the first step should be to make the trees grow faster than the rate of desert expansion, which depends on the development of a more scientific and reasonable sand control plan. In order to completely solve this problem, the grass grid sand control method came into being.
The so-called grass grid sand control method is to divide the desert into grid-like plots with uniform specifications, and then plant various vegetation in each grid to form an effective ecological barrier. Since this method was put into use, significant anti-sand effects have been obtained. However, with the passage of time, people gradually realized that even if this method is effective, it is difficult to escape the dilemma of inefficient artificial planting, and only about 10 acres of green area can be planted by hard work every day. In addition, labor costs are rising year by year, and project construction costs have also risen sharply, which will bring a heavy burden to the country and the country.
This dilemma has always plagued China until 2016, when a research team led by Dr. Liu Jinhao, vice president of Beijing Forestry University, developed a multi-functional sand fixing machine. The emergence of this machine successfully solves the two major problems of inefficiency and high cost in the implementation of the sand barrier plan.
Multi-functional three-dimensional sand fixing machine, also commonly known as"The giant who devoured the sand"., which resembles a large truck. It is understood that this model of multi-functional sand fixing machine is equipped with a variety of advanced equipment, such as forage box, grass combing equipment, sand fixing equipment and so on. These devices enable the machine to automate a series of automated operations such as seeding, irrigation, fertilization, burrowing, and pipe burial in desert environments.
Before starting the machine, the operator will fill the hay box with the right amount of hay. The sand fixer then moves steadily through the desert under the control of the driver. During the drive, the forage is discharged into the trunk, where it is treated by a sand fixation plant, then rearranged and turned into a grass grid, which is then planted stably in the sand under the pressure of round rollers. At the same time, in the process of planting dense forage, the sand fixing machine can also accurately control the spacing between plants, and freely adjust the planting depth of forage according to the length of the identified forage rhizomes, so as to greatly improve the survival rate of forage.
In the whole process of plant planting, the fixed sand machine can also transport nutrient solution and seeds simultaneously, and the water source and fertilizer can be directly transported to the plant root through the buried pipeline system. In this way, a precise, fully automated planting process is achieved. According to the research team, their sand fixer is not only far more efficient than manual labor, but can also easily plant plants up to 15 centimetres underground, which has been unattainable in the past.
The excellent performance of the three-dimensional sand fixing machine is undoubtedly remarkable, and in just one hour, 2,000 vegetation plants have been successfully planted, and it is expected that at least 40 acres of desert greening can be completed every day, which is equivalent to 50 times the artificial efficiency. In addition, the system is able to adjust important parameters such as borehole depth, seeding density and irrigation water volume according to the current land conditions.
Through the precise seeding operation of the sand fixer, the survival rate of the plants can reach an astonishing 80%. Recently, its R&D team optimized and upgraded the equipment again. In addition to the original functions, today's sand fixers are also equipped with an adaptive swing arm disc device. This technology allows the machine to have a wider operating range, transforming small desert areas into green land suitable for planting.
The R&D team has been working hard to promote the continuous upgrade of the sand fixing machine equipment and is going all out to develop its unmanned system. Achieving full automation of desert management will lead the field to a more advanced future, and advanced technology will replace manpower in those extremely harsh environmental areas to complete our unfinished tasks.
This sand fixing machine has been used in Gansu Province, Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region and Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region in China, and can improve the desert environment of about 4 million mu per year on average. In particular, Gansu Province has made remarkable progress in adopting mechanized desertification control methods, and the current annual treatment volume has reached an astonishing 2.03 million mu. Compared with 1996, the average annual desert expansion area in the region was 2,460 square kilometers, and now there is an average annual reduction of 1,980 square kilometers, which is undoubtedly a major historical leap and magnificent landscape.
The advent of the three-dimensional multi-functional sand fixing machine has also attracted great attention from the United Nations, and many countries are actively introducing and promoting this advanced equipment, hoping that it can bring dynamic change opportunities to the global desert management.
In 1994, the United Nations General Assembly formally adopted the United Nations Convention to Combat Desertification, which revealed that land desertification has gradually evolved into an urgent and urgent ecological and environmental problem in various parts of the world, and has a direct impact on the survival and development of a total of about 3.2 billion people. Against this backdrop, China has firmly put forward the ecological and environmental protection plan of "striving to build an ideal world where human society will no longer face the threat of land degradation" as its ultimate goal.
What are the necessary key links to rectify the problem of land desertification in China?It can be roughly summarized into two main reasons: first, from the natural aspect, due to the geographical location of the North China Plain, which is located deep inland, far from the ocean, and the obstruction of moisture on the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau, the areas with frequent desertification usually have the problems of scarce rainfall and huge evaporation.
Desertification is further exacerbated by the harshness of the natural environment with strong winds blowing frequently from west to east and from north to south. Second, from the perspective of human activities: since the last century, with the continuous and rapid expansion of the Chinese population, the problem of land desertification has become increasingly serious. Due to various reasons such as overgrazing, illegal reclamation, improper use of water resources and indiscriminate deforestation, coupled with the lack of efficient and feasible irrigation technology, the secondary salinization of cultivated land has led to the transformation of large areas of land into deserts.
In China, a nationwide desertification survey is organized every five years, and the most recent survey completed in 2022 shows that the total area of severely desertified land and extremely severe desertification land in China has decreased by a staggering 19,297 square kilometers and 32,587 square kilometers respectively compared with 2014.
In fact, according to relevant statistics, as early as 2021, the land area of three types of desertification, desertification, and rocky desertification in China is shrinking sharply year by year: meteorites shrink at a rate of about 3,860 square kilometers every year;The rate of degradation of desertified land is maintained at about 1980 square kilometers per yearAs for desertified land, it is decreasing at an average annual rate of 2,424 square kilometres.
It's worth emphasizing that the public release of NASA's satellites** reveals another encouraging fact: China contributed significantly to a quarter of the world's new green area between 2000 and 2017.
Looking back at the period when New China was first established, China's forest coverage rate was only a pitiful 86, however, in 2020 it has risen to 2304％。There is no doubt that this figure will continue to climb in the future, and China's greening industry is continuing to write an exciting green legend.