Seeing Beautiful China, the Loess Plateau has transitioned from "yellow" to "green" with a vegetation coverage rate of over 63%. Green mountains | ecology | green vegetation
CCTV News: "The environment is people's livelihood, the green mountains are beautiful, and the blue sky is also happiness." Since the 18th National Congress of the Communist Party of China, significant steps have been taken in the construction of a beautiful China, and the people's sense of ecological environment gain, happiness, and security has significantly increased. 2023 is the beginning year of fully implementing the spirit of the 20th National Congress of the Communist Party of China, and all regions and departments are actively building a modernization of harmonious coexistence between humans and nature.
The Loess Plateau once nurtured a brilliant Chinese civilization and was also one of the most severely eroded and ecologically fragile regions in China and even the world. Nowadays, the once countless valleys and valleys have already been dyed with greenery; The once desert sand has long been vibrant. The Loess Plateau has historically achieved a shift in the main color tone from yellow to green.
The Loess Plateau is located in the central northern part of China, including a vast area west of the Taihang Mountains, east of the Wushaoling Mountains, north of the Qinling Mountains, and south of the Great Wall, with an area of approximately 640000 square kilometers. In history, the Loess Plateau was once rich in water and grass, with fertile fields spanning thousands of miles. However, thousands of years of cultivation and utilization have caused extensive degradation of vegetation, wind and sand invasion, soil erosion, and ecological environment restoration, which have become a long-standing challenge here.
So, people came up with a series of clever designs to intercept the soil and water lost from the mountains in the silt dams in the ditches, to build fish scale shaped tree pits in order to plant trees on the steep slopes of high mountains, and to transform the originally sloping slopes into stepped dry terraced fields. Combined with regular aerial seeding and afforestation every year, soil erosion is gradually being controlled. However, a greater threat still exists, locking in the soil beneath our feet and stopping the flowing sand and wind.
More than 40 years ago, an old man from northern Shaanxi came to this sandy land behind the village. He planted 2000 trees, and 1999 of them died, with only one tree surviving. In the boundless sand sea, this weak seedling that grows tenaciously like a small grass gives the old man hope. So, he moved into the sand with his whole family, and no one could have imagined that the surviving tree became the driving force for several generations to plant trees. After more than 40 years of unremitting efforts, the entire sandy land was almost eradicated.
This is the boundary between agriculture and nomadic culture, and also the forefront of the sandstorm tug of war. In 1978, the land greening action represented by the "Three North" shelter forest project was launched in the north, and the sand control workers worked generation after generation. In recent years, with the implementation of projects such as returning farmland to forests and grasslands, all 8.6 million acres of quicksand in the local area have been fixed or semi fixed, and the average vegetation coverage in sandy areas has reached 60%.
Now, standing at the highest point of this sandy land, the land in front of me is no longer a tree or a little green. Since the 18th National Congress of the Communist Party of China, China has increased ecological and environmental protection with unprecedented efforts, and the green territory of Shaanxi has extended more than 400 kilometers to the north. Looking down from the plane, from the Loess Plateau to the Mu Us Sandy Land, the loess is covered in green, the yellow sand recedes, and the Yellow River water gradually clears.
However, single species genes, threats from pests and diseases, natural degradation of tree species, and unreasonable vegetation configuration are still urgent issues in ecological restoration of the Loess Plateau.
Nowadays, the vegetation coverage of the Loess Plateau has been continuously increasing, from 34% before to over 63% now, making it one of the regions with the fastest growth in forest coverage in China. From yellow sand filling the sky to lush greenery, the scene in the lyrics no longer exists, replaced by the lush and abundant fertile land before us. The people here are also learning how to coexist with nature again while transforming the time of sand and soil.
