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.

Thanks to the world's largest reforestation project conducted by the Chinese government, the forest coverage rate in the region, which is home to the world's largest loess plateau and several deserts, has doubled.

However, it would be too hasty to attribute the ecological betterment to changes brought about by local residents becoming more environmentally conscious.

Data of the Chinese Academy of Sciences indicate the increase of the water flow to the region is mainly from the melting of the glaciers on the Qilian Mountain Range, where about one-sixth of the 3,000 sq km of glaciers have disappeared over the past 50 years, and it is predicted the remaining 2,000 some sq km of glaciers will vanish before the middle of this century, because of global warming, a process that seems almost irreversible.

So the flourishing greenery in the region will just be a flash in the pan in the long run, and the dramatic expansion of reforested area will only speed up the desertification of the area after the natural water supply starts to fall.

It is urgent for the government to divert more attention from planting trees to preparing for the foreseeable changes. Otherwise, it would only be a matter of time before local towns are deserted just like the hundreds of ancient towns that now lie buried in sands in the region as a testimony to the region's water shortage.

Ye Qian in Beijing contributed to this story