The first thing we need to know is that the desert is actually a very normal geographical landscape on the earth. Even without humans, deserts will appear. However, due to human activities, land desertification has occurred in some areas where there was no desert. What we want to control is land desertification and local sandstorms.
Although afforestation can eliminate land desertification, forced afforestation in desert areas is likely to aggravate land desertification. What the hell is going on here?
Can trees be planted in desert areas? We know that most desert areas are formed because they are far away from the ocean, with little rainfall and fragile ecological environment. If humans graze, chop wood and farm land here, it may aggravate soil desertification.
Although trees can improve soil desertification, different trees have different needs for local water resources. When some big trees grow, their leaves will evaporate a lot of water, so the water absorbed by the roots will be evaporated into the air by the leaves, so big trees are not suitable for desert areas.
In addition, some vegetation with large water demand can't be planted here, such as eucalyptus called "underground pump".
Guangxi is a region with abundant rainfall. Even so, after planting eucalyptus on a large scale, it still faces the problem of soil desertification. In other words, the selection of tree species is very important for afforestation in desert areas. If inappropriate tree species are forcibly planted here regardless of the local ecological environment, the local soil desertification will be aggravated.
Generally experienced people will choose local tree species for afforestation. For example: flower branches, Haloxylon ammodendron, etc. These trees are not only drought-resistant, but also cold-resistant, and will not die even in winter.
In addition, Haloxylon ammodendron also plays the role of suspended animation. When Haloxylon ammodendron faces severe drought, they will go into suspended animation, at which time they will sacrifice their leaves and keep their roots. The next time they encounter precipitation or river water, they can recover from suspended animation.
How to plant trees For many people, planting trees means digging holes, planting trees and watering. As long as the trees can survive after three years, it can be said that afforestation has been successful.
But in fact, these are not enough.
We know that the purpose of planting trees is to restore the local wild system, and there are not only trees, but also various insects and creatures in the local ecological environment. When planting trees, we need to provide them with a reasonable habitat.
Take birds for example. Many birds have the habit of building nests in trees. In order to ensure that these birds have enough places to nest, we need to plant some big trees.
In addition, to enrich the variety of trees as much as possible, it is best not to plant all kinds of trees, because the species are too single, which makes some wild animals unable to survive here.
In addition to choosing the types of trees, we should also improve the methods of planting trees. According to a local person in charge of tree planting, our tree planting technology today is no different from that in the 1970s. We should know that the technology now is obviously higher than that in the 1970s, but the tree planting technology has not improved, which shows that people did not attach importance to tree planting in the past, or there was no professional expert to participate.
Now many highly educated experts have participated in the desert tree planting project and improved the way of tree planting, such as: breeding experts cultivate seedlings that are more suitable for desert areas; Develop drip irrigation; Improve the way of planting trees.
In the past, people thought that if a small seedling could survive after three years, it would mean that the tree was planted successfully. But today's experts are concerned about 1 and 9 points. If we only plant trees and let the seedlings survive for three years before growing, the ecology of this area will never be restored. What we have to do is to take good care of the tree no matter how old it is, and never let it grow freely.
In this way, with the joint efforts of non-profit organizations, local farmers, the government and the people of China, many desertified lands in China have been harnessed, and the local economy and ecological environment have been improved.
More importantly, there are fewer and fewer sandstorms in northern China. Nowadays, there are more and more blue sky and white clouds, and there are more and more local animal species, and foxes that have not been seen for many years occasionally haunt here. Fox means that the local food chain is relatively complete and the local ecology belongs to benign development.
According to the Bulletin of China's Land Greening in 20 19 issued by the National Greening Committee, last year, China completed afforestation of 7.067 million hectares, forest tending of 7.733 million hectares and grassland improvement of 31470,000 hectares by planting grass.
In our view, these are just data, but what really changed the people's environment in northwest China and improved the local ecological environment is the change of data. If you have the chance, you can go to the western region to see these changes in person. Maybe you will be proud to live in a country like ours again.