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So many trees planted in Taklamakan Desert that it's turned into a carbon sink
- normalaccess 9mo agoThis is the way
- blondie9x 9mo agoAre you able to find it on Google Maps? Having a hard time locating it. "Based on the results of this study, the Taklamakan Desert, although only around its rim, represents the first successful model demonstrating the possibility of transforming a desert into a carbon sink," Yung said.
- stevenjgarner 9mo agohttps://www.google.com/maps/place/Taklamakan+Desert/@38.8709713,82.1376692,628m/data=!3m2!1e3!4b1!4m6!3m5!1s0x38ff6e07200ca3e1:0xd76b95f76a70f9a2!8m2!3d38.8709713!4d82.1402441!16zL20vMDFyNXp0?entry=ttu&g_ep=EgoyMDI2MDIwOS4wIKXMDSoASAFQAw%3D%3D https://www.google.com/maps/place/Taklamakan+Desert/@38.8709...
- triceratops 9mo agoThere's definitely a ring of green around it. If that's all human-made, good for them.
- aavci 9mo agoMaybe it's me but I couldn't see it.
- triceratops 9mo agoGo to the link in GP's post then zoom out.
- tyre 9mo agoI believe this is an example https://maps.app.goo.gl/aXtwERHb2pVxEVnV6 https://maps.app.goo.gl/aXtwERHb2pVxEVnV6 Those rows of greenery are the trees planted. They do a ton of this by hand, it's really fascinating.
- ragall 9mo ago> They do a ton of this by hand, it's really fascinating They used to, but now they have robots that plant tree seedlings.
- thehamkercat 9mo agoThis? https://maps.app.goo.gl/kATdsjnKnkWACzoc6 https://maps.app.goo.gl/kATdsjnKnkWACzoc6
- sct202 9mo agoA lot of the roads that cross the desert look like they're flanked by trees or by some kind scrubby grass mounds. This road is flanked by trees or bushes https://maps.app.goo.gl/JW3gxd8wxSiuwhnZ7 https://maps.app.goo.gl/JW3gxd8wxSiuwhnZ7
- culi 9mo agoChina accounts for more than 25% of the global net increase in leaf area between 2000 and 2017, according to NASA data https://www.livescience.com/planet-earth/plants/china-has-planted-so-many-trees-its-changed-the-entire-countrys-water-distribution https://www.livescience.com/planet-earth/plants/china-has-pl... China's also been a major supporter of the Great Green Wall of Africa providing technology and funding. https://www.scmp.com/news/china/science/article/3302068/why-china-quietly-helping-africa-build-great-green-wall-across-sahara https://www.scmp.com/news/china/science/article/3302068/why-...
- farklenotabot 9mo ago[flagged]
- luis_cho 9mo agoAnd most of their carbon dioxide production is due to “developed countries” consumption
- cgfjtynzdrfht 9mo ago[dead]
- triceratops 9mo agoThat's not true.
- jillesvangurp 9mo agoAddressing desertification of land is actually pretty smart. It's not pure charity. The land is actually more valuable when it isn't a desert anymore. If the land can support soil and hold water again, it becomes suitable for farming. If you don that sustainably (i.e. don't allow it to turn it back into desert), that adds to the economy. There's a lot of degraded land all over the world that with a little bit of focus and attention could be upgraded back to something more valuable. Some example: - centuries of overgrazing by sheep and goats has turned much of the middle east into a waste land. Simply keeping sheep off the land with some fences can actually restore land within a few years. - Places like the UK and Ireland used to be covered in Atlantic Rain forest. Forestry and overgrazing has turned much of both countries into land with very low bio diversity. Restoring forests would be a lot of work. But like the middle east, keeping the sheep from destroying new trees before they have a chance to establish themselves would help. Places like Dartmoor are effectively so barren that the only thing that grows there is a type of grass that even sheep don't like. - Scotland has a lot of planted pine forests that have drowned out native species. Bio diversity is low. - Parts of Germany have similar issues with lots of production forests having no bio diversity. There's a crisis in parts of Germany where insects are destroying parts of those forests now. The solution is actually just ripping out the production forests and re-introducing native species. - Prairies in the US used to be kept in check by herds of bison that no longer exist and are no longer able to migrate around. Continuous cattle overgrazing of the same land destroyed much of the land. It no longer recovers in between grazing. And mono culture of low value crops like corn and soy beans isn't helping either. There are many more examples around the world. The problems vary from area to area but they have in common that local farmers abuse the land and the land then degrades. Soil erosion, problems with water retention, vastly reduced bio diversity, etc. are the result. The other thing they have in common is that putting a stop to the negative behavior tends to revert some of the effects. In some cases fairly quickly even. And as the Chinese show, putting some effort in can actually work. There's no one size fits all solution. But there are plenty of things that can work.
- 1970-01-01 9mo agoSo not really a carbon sink but a carbon perimeter.
- pfdietz 9mo agoI wonder how the albedo has changed, and evaporation of water there.
- engineer_22 9mo agoThat was my thought too Is it possible the trees can change the climate in the region? Can trees dampen regional water flux, seed clouds down range?
- WillAdams 9mo agoYes, they do, which has had implications for rainfall patterns: https://www.msn.com/en-us/weather/climate-change/china-accidentally-hacked-its-own-rainfall-after-planting-billions-of-trees/ar-AA1VkoS0 https://www.msn.com/en-us/weather/climate-change/china-accid... (if that doesn't come up, search terms to find it were "news china rainfall forest tree planting change")
- culi 9mo agoIn fact as much as 50% of the Amazon's rain can be attributed to the trees themselves. Both through evapotranspiration strategies and increased cloud-seeding particles However, I think the more relevant dynamic for this region is the water-holding capacity of the soil. If you get lost in a desert you are more likely to drown than to die of thirst because the water-holding capacity of the "soil" is almost nothing making flash floods likely. But soil that is at an advanced stage of ecological succession will be dominated by mycorrhizal fungi that produce glomalose. This type of soil can hold as much as 50x more water than "dead" soil
- qualitylearing 9mo ago[dead]
- triceratops 9mo agohttps://www.livescience.com/planet-earth/plants/china-has-planted-so-many-trees-its-changed-the-entire-countrys-water-distribution https://www.livescience.com/planet-earth/plants/china-has-pl... was posted in another comment. The tl;dr seems to be less rainfall in the eastern regions and more in Tibet.
- yanhangyhy 9mo agoAlipay has a function called ant forest, you use the app more often, you get more credit. And when it reach certain amount, aliaba will plant a small tree in the desert. People used to be crazy about this shit, but not for now. I guess the main reason is that these effort are good activities, but it didn’t help that much, compared to the effort from the government. At least on the this topic, they did a pretty good job, it last for decades, and it will countinue. Alipay has another function called zhima credit score, which is related to the ant forest, you can rent bikes and power banks with no deposit when you have a high score. and it’s the base block of so called ‘social credit score’ for Chinese people
- Twirrim 9mo agoProjects around planting trees have often failed, in part from the choice of tree, in part because it takes more than just planting a tree to restore the habitat. It's generally better to work with the existing flora to promote growth and expansion, and/or help the stumps of trees that have been cut-down grow fresh again (e.g. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S5g60g9vmlY https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S5g60g9vmlY)
- aavci 9mo agoHow much deforestation over the past decades has been reversed and is deforestation currently under control?
- ceejayoz 9mo agoPer the article: > China finished encircling the Taklamakan Desert with vegetation in 2024, and researchers say the effort has stabilized sand dunes and grown forest cover in the country from 10% of its area in 1949 to more than 25% today.
- inglor_cz 9mo agoThe main problem with attempts at reversing the damage is that forests aren't fungible. An old growth forest has a rich, balanced ecosystem. Newly planted forests tend to be susceptible to catastrophic damage by various critters, as the species mix is much less complex, and their fauna and flora is relatively impoverished.
- HappyPanacea 9mo agoSo you just need to be stubborn until they stick or cleverer in how you go about it?
- inglor_cz 9mo agoBiology is complicated, ecology even more so... An old forest is a result of multiple waves successions after disasters (fire, windstorms etc.), which are really hard to emulate. Some desirable seedlings are hard to grow artificially, others just won't prosper in situ unless/until very specific conditions are met... After a long enough time, the forest will eventually revert to a fully natural state, but that time is way longer than human lifetime. It is a living organism of sorts and living organisms are much easier to kill than to re-create.
- IncreasePosts 9mo agoIn the grand scheme of things having an old growth forest is probably better than having a new growth forest, but if a goal is to increase carbon absorption, new growth forests beat the pants off old growth forests.
- woodpanel 9mo agoSo to plant a row of trees a bulldozer has to level sand dunes. I somehow doubt the exhaust from this process is factored into the CO2 sink calculation.
- deleted 9mo ago[deleted]
- ceejayoz 9mo agohttps://www.sunbeltrentals.co.uk/news-and-blogs/decrease-your-environmental-impact-with-machine-control/ https://www.sunbeltrentals.co.uk/news-and-blogs/decrease-you... > Of course, we know that fuel consumption varies drastically from machine to machine, so we’ve looked at an example of a very high utilisation rate too. We found that an 8T excavator that spent 11 hours and 3 minutes working, 1 hour and 6 minutes of which were idle, it used 89 litres of fuel and resulted in 237.4kgs of carbon emissions. 4 hours saved on that machine would be a total of 84kgs of carbon emissions on average. https://onetreeplanted.org/blogs/stories/how-much-co2-does-tree-absorb https://onetreeplanted.org/blogs/stories/how-much-co2-does-t... > To determine the amount of carbon dioxide a tree can absorb, we combine average planting densities with a conservative estimate of carbon per hectare to estimate that the average tree absorbs an average of 10 kilograms, or 22 pounds, of carbon dioxide per year for the first 20 years. As long as they're not taking all day for one tree, I think they'll be OK.
- zokier 9mo agoThat tree carbon capture estimate is probably conservative here if planting trees achieved de-desertification and resulted a larger thriving ecosystem.
- subscribed 9mo agoLikely very conservative considering the changes to the local biome, capture in the soil, etc : https://www.climate-forests.org/post/carbon-sequestration-and-storage-capacity-of-older-trees-and-forests https://www.climate-forests.org/post/carbon-sequestration-an...
- andrewstuart 9mo agoThis is not of the slightest interest to any politician in 2026.
- ceejayoz 9mo agoEven if that were true, it'd still be a dumb position to take. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dust_Bowl https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dust_Bowl
- andrewstuart 9mo agoExactly.
- contingencies 9mo ago[flagged]
- ceejayoz 9mo agoIt's on the edges of the desert, to limit its ongoing expansion, which was directly due to human activity.
- contingencies 9mo agoAnd may I ask where would you assume the highest diversity of life exists in a desert?
- ceejayoz 9mo agoI would assume that the unchecked human-generated expansion of the desert reduces the diversity of what was previously not desert.
- OutOfHere 9mo agoA desert is a collapsed biome relative to when it was not a desert. As such, it has a huge debt to repay to what was lost due to the desertification. If the desertification is not reversed, it will go only deeper into debt, killing what little life is left there via a continued rise in temperature. As such, what is being done to reverse the desertification and restore the biome is most appropriate.
- contingencies 9mo ago[flagged]
- wussboy 9mo agoAnd desertification has destroyed many existing biomes. I think, in the grand scheme of things, more forest is better than more desert, so this is a net positive.
- rickcarlino 9mo agoDo initiatives like these hurt native desert species?
- thyristan 9mo agoYes. But nobody cares about a few unimportant bugs and mice.
- bilsbie 9mo agoI’ve never heard this mentioned but it seems like an environmentalist could support increasing total life on a piece of land vs preserving specific sparse species. I’d rather see a region of land be a thriving rainforest with millions of species vs protecting some specific tree.
- b0rtb0rt 9mo agohave you ever been to a real desert? lots of plants and animals live there
- fhdkweig 9mo agoThere is an interesting effect where deserts help rain forests and oceans grow new life. Winds carry desert sands and dust that are rich in iron and phosphorus into the oceans and act as fertilizer. Even lifeless deserts are important to the global ecosystems. https://duckduckgo.com/?q=desert+sands+fertilize+oceans https://duckduckgo.com/?q=desert+sands+fertilize+oceans
- mikrotikker 9mo agoThe Sahara feeds the Amazon.
- criddell 9mo agoSurely deforestation hurt native species as well. Is there any reason to not try to reverse some of that damage? Do you think they are going to make things worse overall?
- 9mo ago
- mahirsaid 9mo agoPlanting more trees regardless of region rather than cutting them down has a profound effect on the air quality. Forests are an enormous help to carbon recycling.
- andyjohnson0 9mo agoMeanwhile the US government is abandoning the regulation of emissions that cause climate change. https://www.nytimes.com/2026/02/12/climate/trump-epa-greenhouse-gases-climate-change.html https://www.nytimes.com/2026/02/12/climate/trump-epa-greenho... https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2026/feb/12/trump-epa-rollback-pollution-regulation-endangerment-finding https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2026/feb/12/trump-epa-ro...
- hedgehog 9mo agoHere's a video about this effort from 2013 which gives a good view on how a lot of it was done: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Um6Fhw841p0 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Um6Fhw841p0
- throw310822 9mo agoDoes the title make sense? A desert should be carbon-neutral, therefore a single tree growing in the desert is enough to make it a carbon sink.
- Y-bar 9mo agoCertain areas can release more carbon than trees bind if there are trees there, for example peats (obviously not a desert) and tundras (more akin to a desert). These have often a lot of carbon bound in the ground which can be released.
- cgfjtynzdrfht 9mo ago[dead]
- NoSalt 9mo agoI am left wondering why China is making all of these "green" changes; more renewables, planting trees at the edges of deserts, etc. I mean, I guess it could be altruistic, to help the Earth and it's people. However, I just don't see that kind of attitude coming out of China. So, again, I am left wondering what their angle is. Is it simply to "stick it" to the United States? What is everybody's opinion on this?
- ceejayoz 9mo agoI think the real question is the other way around; why isn't the US the world leader in this? China's answer is fairly straightforward - jobs, exports, energy independence, wind/solar is cheaper, and they have 1.3B people who don't want to live in a big polluted desert.
- dnautics 9mo agoit kinda is? the us and Europe both have had year-on-year raw and trade-corrected negative ghg production, the us has since the obama administration, inclusive of trump I. there are a lot of surprises, for example texas being the #1 state for renewable energy production
- 3E8Jn5VjR 9mo agoIs the year-on-year statement true? The EU’s data seems to show a slight increase in emissions for the US from 2023 to 2024. https://edgar.jrc.ec.europa.eu/report_2025 https://edgar.jrc.ec.europa.eu/report_2025
- mrguyorama 9mo agoBecause China wants to rule the world. That includes roughly being seen as a great bastion of awesomeness. The huge solar rollout is very much because China thinks it might end up in a war, and they are currently very vulnerable to a blockade for energy resources, and grid scale solar is unblockadable for like 20 years. You can bomb it, but that's a hard mission. If what I believe is correct, there would also be evidence of China creating unblockadable food transport lines and relationships. Global Warming is well understood all over the world. China doesn't want the world to suck right before they finally undo their Century of Humiliation and retake their "rightful" place as mega empire that exports culture and tech and power. They want to be the super power ruling over an awesome world, not ruling over ashes. I've heard arguments that China has fairly limited "Soft power", and they really want to fix that, which takes actions that at least look altruistic and win-win. With the US self-defeating, China is in a great place to be the leader of a stable world, and even be a counterweight to an abusive USA.
- maxglute 9mo ago50 years in on a 70 year project. It's not sexy / monumental like the pyramids, which was built in less time.
- mikrotikker 9mo agoForgive me if I don't trust Chinese researchers on research in China.