Lake Lop Nur of Xinjiang dried out in 1964 because there was no steady inflow of water. The once-wet land of the lake soon became a sheer yellow desert. In the arid northwest of China, disasters resulting from the phenomenon of “sand advances while water recedes” have gone from bad to worse in recent decades.
According to a Xinhua News Agency report, Tarim River is the longest inland river in China, and is also the mother river for millions of people in Southern Xinjiang, nourishing the ecology of the oasis. In 1972, the lower reaches of Tarim River terminated at about 300 kilometers, and the shallow part of the Taiterma Lake dried out. The underground water levels dropped significantly. The vegetation along the river banks withered significantly and the desertification of the green corridor was very serious. The Takelamakan Desert in the west bank and Kumutage Desert in the east bank conjoined from both directions, due to the advance of sand dunes and incessant expansion of wind-eroded drift sand. As a result, a large number of farmers and herdsmen lost their homelands, where their families had lived for generations.
Gansu Province’s Minqin County is situated in the northeast of Hexi Corridor. It has been following the same fate as Lake Lop Nur since the late 1990s. The reduction of water in Shiyang River year after year, along with the serious overuse of underground water, caused Qingtu Lake in northern Minqin County to dry up. A huge area of vegetation in the oasis has withered due to lack of water. The Tengeli Desert and the Badanjilin Desert have encroached on the oasis at a speed of 8 meters per year. Every year, about 100,000 Chinese acres of farmlands in the Minqin Oasis have undergone desertification, which has become one of the major sources of severe sandstorms in northwestern China.
According to a survey conducted by the Chinese Academy of Sciences’ Xinjiang Institute of Biology, Pedology and Desert Research, the so-called “humans recede while sand advances” is actually the phenomenon of “sand advances while water recedes.” Due to the unreasonable exploitation of water resources, the area of newly desertificated land in the Taklimakan Desert has reached 3,430 square kilometers, which accounts for 40 percent of the total area of the total desertificated land in the Taklimakan Desert.
What’s even more worrying is that while water shortages are increasingly prominent at present, the abuse of water resources in northwest China is still very serious. Along the two sides of the roads in Minqin Oasis, from the north to the south, covering four or five townships including Xiqu, Xishaliang and Quanshan, lots of pumps are arbitrarily pumping underground water day and night from as deep as 80 to 300 meters in the ground to irrigate high water-consuming crops such as corn and cotton. Some fields were often wholly covered by water, looking like mirrors shining in the sunlight. The Tarim River’s termination in the lower reaches and the ensuing deterioration of ecology are due mainly to the overuse of water in source areas, as well as in the upper and middle reaches of the river.
Even though the cultivation of wild land in the Xinjiang Autonomous Region has long been prohibited, cultivation in Tarim River’s drainage area has been exceptionally rampant due to a sudden rise in cotton prices last spring. It is reported that the area of illegally cultivated wild land in Tarim River’s drainage area, from 2001 to last July, amounted to 132,000 Chinese acres; among them, more than 20,000 Chinese acres have been illegally cultivated since the second half of last year.
