China has planted so many trees around the Taklamakan Desert that this ‘biological vacuum’ has been turned into a carbon sink

Massive tree planting in China is turning one of the world’s largest and driest deserts into a carbon sink. In other words, they absorb more carbon from the atmosphere than they emit, new research shows.

The Taklamakan Desert (also spelled Taklamakan or Taklamakan) is slightly larger than the state of Montana, spanning approximately 130,000 square miles (337,000 square kilometers). Surrounded by high mountains, moist air cannot reach the desert for most of the year, creating very dry conditions that are harsh for most plants.

But over the past few decades, China has been planting forests on the edges of the Taklamakan, and new research suggests this approach is starting to bear fruit.

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“We found for the first time that human-driven interventions can effectively enhance carbon sequestration in even the most extreme arid regions, demonstrating the potential to turn deserts into carbon sinks and halt desertification,” study co-author Yuk Yong, professor of planetary science at Caltech and senior scientist at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, told Live Science via email.

More than 95 percent of the Taklamakan desert is covered by shifting sand, and it has long been considered a “biological vacuum,” according to the study. Deserts have continued to expand since the 1950s, when China carried out large-scale urbanization and agricultural expansion. This natural land conversion created more sandstorm conditions, commonly blowing away soil and depositing sand in its place, causing land degradation and desertification.

In 1978, China implemented the Three North Shelter Belt Project, a large-scale ecological engineering project aimed at slowing desertification. The project, also known as the “Great Wall of China,” aims to plant billions of trees on the fringes of the Taklamakan and Gobi deserts by 2050. More than 66 billion trees have been planted in northern China so far, but experts debate whether the Great Wall has significantly reduced the frequency of sandstorms.

China will complete surrounding the Taklamakan Desert with vegetation in 2024, and researchers say the effort has stabilized dunes and grown the country’s forest area from 10% of its area in 1949 to more than 25% today.

Scientists have now discovered that the vast vegetation around the Taklamakan Desert absorbs more carbon dioxide (CO2) from the atmosphere than the desert emits. This means the Taklamakan Desert may be turning into a stable carbon sink.

The researchers analyzed ground observations of different vegetation cover types, as well as satellite data showing precipitation, vegetation cover, photosynthesis and CO2 fluxes in the Taklamakan Desert over the past 25 years. They also used the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s Carbon Tracker, which models CO2 sources and sinks around the world, to support their findings.

The results, published Jan. 19 in the journal PNAS, point to a long-term trend of expanding vegetation and increasing carbon absorption along desert edges, consistent in time and space with the Great Wall of China.

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During the study period, precipitation in the Taklamakan Desert during the rainy season from July to September was 2.5 times that in the dry season, averaging about 16 mm per month. Precipitation enhanced vegetation cover, greening, and photosynthesis along the desert margin, resulting in a decrease in CO2 levels across the desert from 416 ppm in the dry season to 413 ppm in the wet season.

Previous studies have shown that the Taklamakan Desert may be a carbon sink, but those studies focused on CO2 absorbed by desert sand. They also suggested that sand is not a stable carbon sink under climate change because rising temperatures could cause the air in the sand to expand, releasing excess carbon dioxide.

“Based on the results of this study, the Taklamakan Desert represents the first successful model to demonstrate the potential of turning the desert into a carbon sink, albeit only around its edges,” Jung said.

The Great Wall’s potential to slow desertification remains unclear, but its role as a carbon sink “could serve as a valuable model for other desert regions,” he added.