How is development in Hotan, Xinjiang?

In recent years, due to the construction of a desertification prevention and control oasis system and the enhancement of local people's environmental awareness, the dustfall in the Xinjiang Hotan Oasis surrounded by the Taklimakan Desert has been declining year by year, and the internal ecological environment of the oasis has been gradually improved.

"The people in Hotan are really miserable. They eat two taels of soil a day, and there is not enough to make up for it during the day." This folk proverb describes the harsh local ecological environment. Hotan area is windy and sandy all year round, with more than 220 days of dusty weather every year, of which about 60 days are filled with dense dust (sandstorms). According to the Hotan Prefecture Forestry Bureau, in the past 30 years, 460,000 acres of farmland have been swallowed up by quicksand in Hotan, and the area of ??desertified land and grassland degradation has reached 30,000 square kilometers.

In the past five years, the amount of dust in Hotan Oasis has gradually decreased. Kaharjiang, director of the regional environmental protection bureau, said that in 2001, the average dust concentration in the Hotan area was 158.32 tons/square kilometer per month, and in 2005, the average dust concentration was 104.88 tons/square kilometer per month, and the amount of dust fell showed a downward trend year by year.

The Hotan Prefecture Environmental Protection Bureau said that the small environmental ecology within the oasis tends to develop benignly, thanks to the local large-scale construction of ecological protection forests and the curbing of destructive behaviors such as firewood logging and indiscriminate reclamation. After decades of construction and protection, there are 2.978 million acres of artificial forests in Hotan area, forming an ecological network system with reasonable allocation of protective forests, economic forests, desert forests, and firewood forests. Currently, there are 1.68 million acres of economic forests in Hotan area, and the large amount of firewood pruned every year can partially solve farmers' firewood problem.

In Cele County, which has been relocated three times due to sandstorms in history, people are well aware of the importance of planting trees to prevent sand. Cele County has launched a vigorous mass afforestation campaign. Today, the entire county has basically realized the transformation of farmland into a forest network, and the degree of forest network in some areas has reached more than 98%.

The Hotan area is also actively building natural gas and biogas household projects. The urban area of ??Hotan has realized natural gas entering homes and centralized heating, and all counties have basically realized the replacement of firewood with liquefied gas and coal. Kaharjiang said that by gradually solving the firewood problem of farmers in the Hotan area and increasing the vegetation coverage on the edge of the oasis, the fragile ecological environment has been effectively protected and the living environment inside the oasis has been gradually improved.