A CCTV documentary shows the efforts and achievements of the people in Xinjiang's Taklamakan Desert in desert control and tree planting through comparison of satellite images spanning 10 years.
Over the past decade, people of all ethnic groups have laid 33,680 hectares of grass grids in the Taklamakan Desert. A total of 11,840 square kilometers of artificial afforestation have been completed, and 2 billion trees have been planted.
Qiemo County is a small town surrounded by desert with a population of over 70,000. The desert here once approached the city at a speed of three to five meters per year.
Over the past decade, changes have continued to occur. People in the county have laid over 6,200 hectares of grass grids in the desert, equivalent to more than 8,700 standard football fields.
The satellite images released in the documentary shows that in 2014, the county was desolate covered with desert; ten years later, it is almost covered with green.
Due to the terrain, the sandstorms in Qiemo moves from east to west all the way to Minfeng County in Hotan Prefecture. In recent years, more than 40,000 people in Minfeng County have planted over 3,700 hectares of trees in the Taklamakan Desert, built 1,600 hectares of farmland shelter belts, and planted 10.656 million plants for sand control.
Another area severely affected by sandstorms in Hotan is Yutian County. In the process of fighting against sandstorms, the local people have developed their unique model of sand control - growing plants such as haloxylon ammodendron and tamarix tamarisk in terraced fields.
Cele County, west of Yutian, is the most severely affected area in Hotan by wind and sand. In recent years, local people have taken the initiative to join the team of sand control, and have planted 21.4828 million trees and 164,500 mu of cash crops such as walnuts and red dates in the desert.
In 1986, the forest coverage rate of Kekeya, a small town in Aksu Prefecture, was only 8 percent, but now it has reached an astonishing 73 percent. So far, nearly 4 million people in Aksu have participated in voluntary tree planting.
Satellite images show people's efforts, achievements in desert control in Xinjiang
