Today's weather is a bit cold, and the news says that smog has covered most of northern China, and many highway intersections around the country have to start road closures.

But this has nothing to do with the mid-mountain village, where the sun is still shining, the sky is blue, and the wind is beautiful. The unique microclimate of the village is once again in full swing, proving to the world that the climate here is unique and extraordinary.

Wang Yong has nothing to do today, his godmother, daughter-in-law and daughter-in-law are still in the city, and his godfather has not been home for several days, and he doesn't know what to study in the institute every day.

At ten o'clock in the morning, Wang Yong got up from the bed, found a little snack stored by his daughter-in-law and daughter-in-law, and first paddled his hungry stomach.

Chewing beef jerky from the prairie in his mouth, Wang Yong casually picked up the remote control and turned on the 42-inch LCD TV at home.

There's a documentary on TV, a film about desertification.

What is being broadcast at this time in the film is a picture of a big sandstorm, covering the sand and being wrapped in strong winds, like the end of the world, which makes people feel creepy.

This guy's power is probably no worse than a tornado, right? The wind swept the sand and roared towards it, and every one of the worlds seemed insignificant in the face of this revenge of nature.

In the voiceover, a low, magnetic baritone speaks of the dangers of desertification, and there are pictures of a lifeless desert, a village buried in sand, a brick wall that blocks the sand......

Desertification, also known as desertification, is the degradation of land, and the originally fertile land has become a Gobi or desert with only sand and gravel.

The 1992 United Nations Conference on Environment and Development defined the concept of desertification as follows: Desertification is the degradation of land in arid, semi-arid and drought-stricken sub-humid lands as a result of factors such as climate change and irrational human economic activities.

The term desertification first originated in the Sahara region of Africa in the sixties and seventies of the twentieth century, and the Sahara region in West Africa was affected by severe drought for several consecutive years. Soil degradation caused unprecedented losses, after which the term desertification began to spread.

At present, nearly one billion people in more than 100 countries in the world, accounting for about one-third of the land area, are under the threat of desertification, with Africa and Asia being the most severely affected.

The desertification of China has become particularly severe with the rapid economic development in recent years. According to statistics released by the Ministry of Land and Resources, China has become one of the countries with the strictest desertification in the world.

According to the results of relevant land surveys and studies, the desertified land area in China is 2.622 million square kilometers, accounting for 27.4% of the country's land area, and nearly 400 million people are affected by desertification.

According to the research of China, the United States and Canada International Cooperation Projects. China's direct economic losses due to desertification are about 54.1 billion yuan.

Among the desertified land in China, the area of wind erosion caused by strong winds is the largest, accounting for 1.607 million square kilometers. According to statistics, since the 70s, the area of land desertification has expanded at a rate of expansion, with an annual increase of 2,460 square kilometers.

In the 40 years since the founding of the People's Republic of China, the area of quicksand in China has increased by 47%, the area of forest land has decreased by 76.4% (you read that right, this is the figure in the data), and the area of grassland has decreased by 17%.

Sandstorms in the spring of each year often envelop the entire northern part of China in windblown sand. Gales mixed with sand and dust swept down the Northwest Plateau and raged across much of northern China.

From the very beginning of the statehood. The state has invested a lot of effort in tackling the problem of desertification. Unfortunately, due to various reasons, the problem of desertification in China has not been fundamentally alleviated, but has become increasingly severe.

The root cause of the formation and expansion of desertification is the anthropogenic destruction of desert ecosystems (including deserts, Gobi systems, grassland systems, forest systems and wetland systems in arid and semi-arid areas). It is the result of the overexploitation and utilization of water resources, biological resources and land resources in the system, which leads to the inherent stability and balance imbalance within the system.

In the past, trees and grasses were planted to prevent desertification through biological and engineering measures. It is not uncommon for the other hand to reclaim wasteland, destroy desert ecosystems, and create new desertified land.

In fact, it is precisely because of the destruction of desert ecosystems that although we have built the "Three Norths" shelterbelt and implemented many desertification prevention and control projects, we have not been able to curb the pace of desertification expansion as a whole.

It can be said that the real reason for the frequent sandstorms in the past half century is not that there is too little artificial vegetation, but that the natural vegetation is too damaged. The partial improvement of the small environment cannot offset the overall inversion of the large environment.

According to relevant studies, when the vegetation coverage reaches more than 30%, soil wind erosion will basically disappear.

However, due to the fact that the planting of trees and grasses in a part of the land in the region has not been coordinated with the large jump in the carrying capacity of another part of the land in the region, or only the planting of trees and grasses has been considered, but no efforts have been made to build basic farmland and greatly increase the output level per unit of land, and the contradiction between the planting of trees and grasses and the already heavy population pressure has become increasingly intense.

If we fail to improve the utilization rate of land per unit area and make it possible to feed more people, this simple governance model of planting trees and grass will never be able to change the increasingly strict desertification pattern.

Since the founding of the People's Republic of China, China has taken various measures to combat desertification. Although large-scale afforestation, large-scale return of farmland to forests and grasslands, and large-scale adoption of various new technologies to save water have also achieved certain results, they have not fundamentally solved the problem of desertification that China is facing.

Wang Yong's eyes were staring at the TV screen, listening to the narrator's low tone and heavy commentary, and an idea suddenly popped up in his mind, the root cause of desertification is actually a lack of water.

When he and his daughter-in-law traveled to the prairie before, they visited many places, and in the northwest region, the primary problem that plagued the local people was the climate and water problems.

As for desertification, the main reason is the lack of water. The scarcity and overuse of water resources have led to the degradation of more and more grasslands, creating new areas of desert.

At the same time, the biggest challenge in combating desertification is also water shortage. Without water, the survival rate of newly planted trees and grasses cannot be guaranteed, and a larger area of trees and grasses cannot be planted to control the desert.

Wang Yong pondered for a while, the matter of water shortage seems to be easy to solve, as long as he sends an interstellar transport ship to find a few planets with water or ice to transport a few times, it is estimated that a huge oasis can be formed in the desert.

But wouldn't this method of transporting water from an alien planet have any bad impact on the safety of the Earth itself? In recent years, the media of various countries have reported on the melting of permanent glaciers in the Arctic and Antarctica, and the rise of sea levels.

If you bring water from an alien planet again, will it upset the balance and accelerate the rise of sea levels, so that many coastal areas will be submerged?

This method still needs to be studied! It seems that it is not advisable for the time being! Come to think of it. Wang Yong thought of drought-resistant rice again. This thing almost does not require much less water than the average plant.

Isn't the reason why the state is advocating the cultivation of millet in desertified areas is because millet can effectively save water compared with crops such as corn, wheat, and cotton? It is said that each acre of land can save up to 400 cubic meters of water!

What if it was replaced with more water-saving and more economically beneficial rice?

Thinking of this, Wang Yong's spirit was shocked, and it seemed to be very interesting! You can really try this thing, if you succeed, the merit is immeasurable, and if you don't succeed, there is no big loss, and if you don't do it, you will lose some money.

But now the most important thing I lack is money, and I really don't put this money in my eyes. In that case, why don't you find someone to try to do this?

Wang Yong, who was excited all of a sudden. Pick up the phone on the coffee table, get up and walk out. He couldn't wait to discuss his new ideas with Lao Li to see how to do this meaningful thing.

However, I just walked to the door of the living room. He remembered that he had never done it before, and he didn't know if it was unreliable to plant rice on a large scale in the desert, and whether he could adapt to it.

It seems that we have to ask the godfather about this matter, and it is best to ask them to send someone to find a desert area to test it first. If it can be successful, then it will be much more reliable to promote it.

Thinking of this, Wang Yong was not in a hurry to find Lao Li. I sat down on the couch again, took out my phone, and dialed my godfather.

"Godfather, do you think our rice can grow in the desert?"

"No matter how drought resistant rice is, it also needs water, how can you let it grow if there is no water in the desert?"

"Is there any way to make him grow in the desert?"

"How did you think of this? Why do you have to put it in the middle of the desert? ”

Cao Wei was very helpless about the strange idea of his godson. That's the desert, right? It's all sand, and there is no water, and there is no water, so how can you grow it?

"This is not just seeing a documentary, it is the desertification of our country that is becoming more and more strict, you said that our rice is much more drought-resistant than ordinary plants, if you are transformed, or after the initial treatment of the desert environment, can you plant rice to control desertification?"

Hearing Wang Yong's explanation, Cao Wei was silent and did not say anything for a long time. A flash of inspiration suddenly flashed in his head, as if this thing was very reliable!

Even if it can't be planted in the desert for the time being, it can be at the edge of the desert! Planting rice, which can be said to be a super water-saving crop, can not only increase the income of local farmers, but also save valuable local groundwater on a large scale, and effectively prevent the continued expansion of desertification.

"Well, I'll report this matter to the above, and then find a place to try it out and see the effect. By the way, you might be able to get that mutant grass to help, but unfortunately it is too slow to reproduce, and it will take time to grow it on a large scale. ”

"Nacheng, you look at it, I'll think about how to replenish water in the desert here."

"Hydrating the desert? You're not kidding, are you?! (To be continued......)

PS: Thank you voltage994, Longfei 200, zheng22990, Jin Wei for the monthly ticket rewards, thank you for your support and love!