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Green Wall of China


The Three-North Shelter Forest Program (simplified Chinese: 三北防护林; traditional Chinese: 三北防護林; pinyin: Sānběi Fánghùlín), also known as the Three-North Shelterbelt Program or the Green Great Wall, is a series of human-planted windbreaking forest strips (shelterbelts) in China, designed to hold back the expansion of the Gobi Desert. It is planned to be completed around 2050, at which point it will be 2,800 miles (4,500 km) long.

The project's name indicates that it is to be carried out in all three of the northern regions: the North, the Northeast and the Northwest.

China has seen 3,600 km2 (1,400 sq mi) of grassland overtaken every year by the Gobi Desert. Each year dust storms blow off as much as 2,000 km2 (800 sq mi) of topsoil, and the storms are increasing in severity each year. These storms also have serious agricultural effects for other nearby countries, such as Japan, North Korea, and South Korea. The Green Wall project was begun in 1978, with the proposed end result of raising northern China's forest cover from 5 to 15 percent and thereby reducing desertification.

The fourth and most recent phase of the project, started in 2003, has two parts: the use of aerial seeding to cover wide swathes of land where the soil is less arid, and the offering of cash incentives to farmers to plant trees and shrubs in areas that are more arid. A $1.2 billion oversight system (including mapping and surveillance databases) is also to be implemented. The "wall" will have a belt with sand-tolerant vegetation arranged in checkerboard patterns in order to stabilize the sand dunes. A gravel platform will be next to the vegetation to hold down sand and encourage a soil crust to form. The trees should also serve as a windbreak from dust storms.


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