China is creating life in its “Sea of Death.”
After nearly five decades of effort, the fringes of the great Taklamakan Desert are becoming a forest, NASA satellite data confirmed.
The Taklamakan is 25 million years old, and was slowly expanding. But since 1978, Beijing has been planting hardy shrubs and trees around its edges to hold it back.
As well as acting as a bulwark against the desert’s encroachment, the greenery is intended to improve agricultural conditions and reduce political unrest in the area, and will act as a carbon sink, Gizmodo reported. The resulting woodland is “not like a rainforest in the Amazon or Congo,” a NASA scientist said, but shows that even barren wastelands can turn green.