China is holding back the desert, for now. The Great Green Wall – a massive belt of trees being planted across China's arid north in what might be the largest ecological engineering project on the planet – seems to work, according to a new study.
"Vegetation has improved and dust storms have decreased significantly in the Great Green Wall region, compared with other areas," says Minghong Tan of the Institute of Geographical Sciences and Natural Resource Research in Beijing. But whether planting trees is a long-term solution remains disputed.
The Gobi and Taklamakan deserts of northern China are Asia's biggest dust bowls. Storms generated there regularly shroud Beijing in dust, which can also fall as far away as Greenland. In an effort to tame the deserts, in 1978 China began planting the wall, which is officially called the Three-North Shelterbelt Forest Programme. It is due for completion in 2050 and will eventually contain more than 100 billion trees in a 4500-kilometre belt, covering more than a tenth of the country. But opinion is divided about its success and advisability, and it has met with widespread scepticism among Western geographers.
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