Gansu's greening sign of global warming

Editor's Note: Halaqi, a lake in the Gobi Desert in the west of Gansu province, dried up nearly 300 years ago, but it has reappeared and has been expanding since a national natural reserve was founded in the region. China Daily writer Li Yang comments:

Located to the north of the glacier-capped Qilian Mountain Range on the northern border of the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau, the lake covers 5 square kilometers now, and is still growing. The lake used to be as large as 200 square kilometers. But the growth of the local population over the past three centuries accelerated the drying up of the 540-km long Shule River - which started from Qilian Mountain and flowed into Halaqi Lake - and thus the disappearance of the lake.

The reappearing of Halaqi Lake is an example of the seemingly delightful improvement of the ecology in the drought-prone areas of Northwest China, particularly in Gansu, Shaanxi and Shanxi provinces, and the Ningxia Hui and Inner Mongolia autonomous regions, where rainfall and river discharge have dramatically increased since 2000, resurrecting many dead rivers, lakes and wetlands.