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Ecological Deterioration Curbed on Upper Reaches of Yangtze River
China's efforts to curb the deteriorating natural environment on the upper reaches of the Yangtze River, the world third largest, have paid off, satellite remote sensing studies show.
A satellite investigation of the area shows that the soil erosion in provinces of Yunnan and Sichuan, and Chongqing Municipality has markedly eased.
Yunnan, Sichuan and Chongqing, which are located in the valleys of the Jinsha River and Jialing River, and the Three Gorges Reservoir area respectively suffer the most serious soil erosion, or 90 percent of the total on the upper reaches of the Yangtze River.
The study reveals that compared with 1987, the annual amount of eroded soil dropped by 11 percent, from the former 1.5 billion tons to the current 1.339 billion tons. The amount of eroded soil per square kilometer went down from 5,118.7 tons to 4,216.8 tons. The Yangtze River valley accounts for one-fifth of the country' s total land area, one-fourth of the total arable land, one-third of the total population and two-fifths of the total industrial and agricultural output value.
China launched a water and soil conservation project on the lower reaches of the Jinsha River, the middle and lower reaches of the Jialing River and the Three Gorges Reservoir area in 1989. Later, a project for building shelter forests also started along the middle and upper reaches of the Yangtze.
The country has so far spent 1.2 billion yuan (about 144 million U.S. dollars) on the water and soil conservation project and harnessed some 60,000 square kilometers of eroded areas. The vegetation coverage rate in the project zone has increased from 22 percent to 41 percent.
In the project zones combined, the eroded area has dropped from 65 percent to 36 percent. The total grain output has risen by more than 30 percent.
At the same time, the shelter forest project has helped improve the vegetation coverage rate from 20 percent to 25 percent in the project areas. The soil erosion in over 100 counties basically has been controlled.
An expert from the Ministry of Water Resources warned that they still have a long way to go to restore the environment in the area.
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