China Daily Global Edition (USA)
Trees soak up new dripping technology
For 20 years Ma Xiaohua has been working as forest ranger in the Xinjiang Production and Construction Corps. He walks more than 20 kilometers each day to irrigate trees. What has changed is that he does not carry a spade to dig the soil for the trees because now they are irrigated with dripping technology.
The 42-year-old Ma got his job from his father, who came to Xinjiang and served in XPCC in 1960s. He is responsible for 380mu shelter belt woods and 10,000-mu public sacsaoul woods. Dripping irrigation technology is now used to irrigate the trees he overseas. It uses pipelines in different diameters to transport water to the plants instead of flood irrigation.
The 150th regiment under the eighth division of XPCC is on the edge of Gurbantungut Desert, China’s largest mobile desert. It is called a peninsula in the desert sea.
From 2006 to 2011, workers planted a shelter belt that circled the regiment, with a width of 100 meters and length of 100 kilometers. Then the area reached 126,000 mu. Now the forest area in the regiment covers about 345,000 mu, or 38 percent of the whole area.
The trees were contracted to workers, so the survival rate is higher than 90 percent and workers can make a profit, said Wang Jianbin, head of the regiment.
The artificial shelter belt is one part of the four-layer desertification prevention system carried out by the regiment. The desert plant area is regarded as the first layer of the system. In 1980s, residents planted more than 10,000-mu sacsaoul in the area where the wild sacsaoul grew to improve soil quality.
“We didn’t irrigate the area except twice at the beginning” said Jiang Jin, director of a research station set in the area by China Academy of Sciences.
The station has been there for more than 60 years. It mainly studies the transitional zone of the desert and the oasis. “The soil has changed in its water containing capacity and the bushes can live for at least another 50 years,” Jiang said.
Ma and his 50 fellow workers have the duty to prevent locals from cutting, herding and hunting in the sacsaoul woods.
“It is a tough job to forest here,’’ said Wang. “Workers contribute a lot to protect our homeland.’’