Sand is flying all over the sky, and the desert is boundless. This is people's first impression of the desert. Mu Us Desert is located at the junction of Shaanxi and Inner Mongolia, with a total area of 42,200 square kilometers.
Looking back at the history of the Qin Dynasty, we will find that the Mu Us area is not a natural desert, and this vast land once carried a prosperous civilization.
As early as the pre-Qin period, after Qin Shihuang unified the world and Meng Tian forced Xiongnu to occupy Ordos Plateau, a large number of immigrants moved here to reclaim land and develop agriculture and animal husbandry.
During the Eastern Jin Dynasty, Helian Bobo, a Xiongnu aristocrat, established the Daxia Kingdom in the Maowusu area, and the capital dominated Wancheng for more than 500 years.
During the Sui and Tang Dynasties, the development of agriculture further expanded the reclamation area of Mu Us area. Affected by population growth, climate change and other factors, a small area of sandy land began to appear in this area. During the following 1000 years, the area of sandy land kept expanding, and by the Ming and Qing dynasties, it was already a vast desert.
In the middle and late Qing Dynasty, the policy of "borrowing land to support the people" encouraged people to reclaim a large number of land, which made the reclamation area in Maowusu area expand continuously and aggravated desertification in this area to some extent.
Until liberation, the Mu Us Desert was still experiencing overwhelming desertification.
With the strengthening of human awareness of environmental protection, human beings have realized that desertification has seriously affected the ecology and environment. Since 1950s, China has proposed to control sandy land, and the Mu Us Desert was one of the most important sandy land at that time. In order to encourage the local people to take the initiative to participate in desertification control and afforestation, the policy of "five barren areas to households, whoever made them, long-term unchanged, allowing inheritance" was put forward at that time, which greatly improved people's enthusiasm.
At that time, sand control and afforestation also belonged to crossing the river by feeling the stones. Later, an effective method was slowly developed: grass grid method.
People bury hay in the sand to form a square of 1 square meter. The square can not only fix the local sand, but also collect rainfall and fix part of the water in the square. Once the plants in the square grow up, hay can also provide fertilizer.
With the unremitting efforts of the local people, the Huangsha Oasis gradually began to take shape. At present, the forest coverage rate and vegetation coverage rate reach 32.89% and 80% respectively, and the Mu Us Desert is about to disappear completely from the territory of China.
According to the Mu Us model, can humans destroy all deserts?
Mu Us Desert Becomes an Oasis
In fact, according to the current management mode of Mu Us Desert, it is difficult to extend it to many naturally formed deserts. After all, the former Mu Us Desert was also a grassland, but it was relatively difficult to manage under the dual effects of human beings and nature. But like the Taklimakan Desert in China, it has been formed for millions of years, and it is extremely dry and rainy here. It is difficult to turn it into an oasis in a short time.
In fact, the transformation of Mu Us Desert into an oasis is only a microcosm of afforestation in China. According to 2065438+February 2009, Nature published the paper "China and India lead the way of global greening". Many people don't realize that China has quietly made many contributions to the global environment.
According to the satellite images released by NASA, the green area of the earth's surface has increased by 5% in the past 30 years, of which only China contributed 25%, Indian contributed 5%, and the remaining 70% came from other countries and regions.
China is sparing no effort to contribute to the increase of green space in the world. However, many countries are rich in forest resources, but they keep cutting down, adding deserts to the earth.
Take the Amazon rain forest as an example. The Amazon rain forest is known as the lung of the earth, which produces one tenth of the oxygen of the earth. However, in recent years, the tropical rain forest is facing two dilemmas, one is human logging, the other is endless forest fires, and the Amazon rain forest is being slowly cleared.
Deforestation and vegetation loss
According to the data released by INPE, the peak of deforestation in Brazil's Amazon region was in June, hitting a new high for four consecutive months. 202 1 in the first quarter, the Amazon rainforest lost 3,609 square kilometers, an increase of 17% compared with last year.
It can be clearly seen from the satellite images that a lot of green in the tropical rain forest has turned white, and South America is likely to evolve into Africa in the future. On the contrary, there is another scene in our country, that is, the desert areas of our country, and some areas have begun to turn green.
According to the public data of China, the forest coverage and forest stock in China have been increasing continuously for 30 years. Land nature reserves account for 18% of China's land area, with a forest coverage rate of 23.04% and a total forest area of 220 million hectares.