Planting more trees regardless of region rather than cutting them down has a profound effect on the air quality. Forests are an enormous help to carbon recycling.
In fact as much as 50% of the Amazon's rain can be attributed to the trees themselves. Both through evapotranspiration strategies and increased cloud-seeding particles
However, I think the more relevant dynamic for this region is the water-holding capacity of the soil. If you get lost in a desert you are more likely to drown than to die of thirst because the water-holding capacity of the "soil" is almost nothing making flash floods likely. But soil that is at an advanced stage of ecological succession will be dominated by mycorrhizal fungi that produce glomalose. This type of soil can hold as much as 50x more water than "dead" soil
There is an interesting effect where deserts help rain forests and oceans grow new life. Winds carry desert sands and dust that are rich in iron and phosphorus into the oceans and act as fertilizer. Even lifeless deserts are important to the global ecosystems.
Surely deforestation hurt native species as well. Is there any reason to not try to reverse some of that damage? Do you think they are going to make things worse overall?
I’ve never heard this mentioned but it seems like an environmentalist could support increasing total life on a piece of land vs preserving specific sparse species.
I’d rather see a region of land be a thriving rainforest with millions of species vs protecting some specific tree.
Alipay has a function called ant forest, you use the app more often, you get more credit. And when it reach certain amount, aliaba will plant a small tree in the desert. People used to be crazy about this shit, but not for now. I guess the main reason is that these effort are good activities, but it didn’t help that much, compared to the effort from the government. At least on the this topic, they did a pretty good job, it last for decades, and it will countinue.
Alipay has another function called zhima credit score, which is related to the ant forest, you can rent bikes and power banks with no deposit when you have a high score. and it’s the base block of so called ‘social credit score’ for Chinese people
Projects around planting trees have often failed, in part from the choice of tree, in part because it takes more than just planting a tree to restore the habitat. It's generally better to work with the existing flora to promote growth and expansion, and/or help the stumps of trees that have been cut-down grow fresh again (e.g. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S5g60g9vmlY)
Are you able to find it on Google Maps? Having a hard time locating it.
"Based on the results of this study, the Taklamakan Desert, although only around its rim, represents the first successful model demonstrating the possibility of transforming a desert into a carbon sink," Yung said.
A lot of the roads that cross the desert look like they're flanked by trees or by some kind scrubby grass mounds. This road is flanked by trees or bushes https://maps.app.goo.gl/JW3gxd8wxSiuwhnZ7
> China finished encircling the Taklamakan Desert with vegetation in 2024, and researchers say the effort has stabilized sand dunes and grown forest cover in the country from 10% of its area in 1949 to more than 25% today.
The main problem with attempts at reversing the damage is that forests aren't fungible.
An old growth forest has a rich, balanced ecosystem. Newly planted forests tend to be susceptible to catastrophic damage by various critters, as the species mix is much less complex, and their fauna and flora is relatively impoverished.
And desertification has destroyed many existing biomes. I think, in the grand scheme of things, more forest is better than more desert, so this is a net positive.
An insufficiently nuanced perspective. In the grand scheme of things, when you destroy a biome it's gone forever. Note that China has a recent history of blockheaded moves like this, eg. mobilizing the entire human population to kill all the birds simultaneously across the country during the cultural revolution. India's discussing re-routing the Ganges. Humans never learn.
So to plant a row of trees a bulldozer has to level sand dunes. I somehow doubt the exhaust from this process is factored into the CO2 sink calculation.
> Of course, we know that fuel consumption varies drastically from machine to machine, so we’ve looked at an example of a very high utilisation rate too. We found that an 8T excavator that spent 11 hours and 3 minutes working, 1 hour and 6 minutes of which were idle, it used 89 litres of fuel and resulted in 237.4kgs of carbon emissions. 4 hours saved on that machine would be a total of 84kgs of carbon emissions on average.
> To determine the amount of carbon dioxide a tree can absorb, we combine average planting densities with a conservative estimate of carbon per hectare to estimate that the average tree absorbs an average of 10 kilograms, or 22 pounds, of carbon dioxide per year for the first 20 years.
As long as they're not taking all day for one tree, I think they'll be OK.
That tree carbon capture estimate is probably conservative here if planting trees achieved de-desertification and resulted a larger thriving ecosystem.
China accounts for more than 25% of the global net increase in leaf area between 2000 and 2017, according to NASA data
https://www.livescience.com/planet-earth/plants/china-has-pl...
China's also been a major supporter of the Great Green Wall of Africa providing technology and funding.
https://www.scmp.com/news/china/science/article/3302068/why-...
And most of their carbon dioxide production is due to “developed countries” consumption
China FTW!
Meanwhile the US government is abandoning the regulation of emissions that cause climate change.
https://www.nytimes.com/2026/02/12/climate/trump-epa-greenho...
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2026/feb/12/trump-epa-ro...
Here's a video about this effort from 2013 which gives a good view on how a lot of this was done:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Um6Fhw841p0
Planting more trees regardless of region rather than cutting them down has a profound effect on the air quality. Forests are an enormous help to carbon recycling.
I wonder how the albedo has changed, and evaporation of water there.
That was my thought too
Is it possible the trees can change the climate in the region? Can trees dampen regional water flux, seed clouds down range?
Yes, they do, which has had implications for rainfall patterns:
https://www.msn.com/en-us/weather/climate-change/china-accid...
(if that doesn't come up, search terms to find it were "news china rainfall forest tree planting change")
In fact as much as 50% of the Amazon's rain can be attributed to the trees themselves. Both through evapotranspiration strategies and increased cloud-seeding particles
However, I think the more relevant dynamic for this region is the water-holding capacity of the soil. If you get lost in a desert you are more likely to drown than to die of thirst because the water-holding capacity of the "soil" is almost nothing making flash floods likely. But soil that is at an advanced stage of ecological succession will be dominated by mycorrhizal fungi that produce glomalose. This type of soil can hold as much as 50x more water than "dead" soil
https://www.livescience.com/planet-earth/plants/china-has-pl... was posted in another comment. The tl;dr seems to be less rainfall in the eastern regions and more in Tibet.
Do initiatives like these hurt native desert species?
There is an interesting effect where deserts help rain forests and oceans grow new life. Winds carry desert sands and dust that are rich in iron and phosphorus into the oceans and act as fertilizer. Even lifeless deserts are important to the global ecosystems.
https://duckduckgo.com/?q=desert+sands+fertilize+oceans
Surely deforestation hurt native species as well. Is there any reason to not try to reverse some of that damage? Do you think they are going to make things worse overall?
I’ve never heard this mentioned but it seems like an environmentalist could support increasing total life on a piece of land vs preserving specific sparse species.
I’d rather see a region of land be a thriving rainforest with millions of species vs protecting some specific tree.
Yes. But nobody cares about a few unimportant bugs and mice.
Alipay has a function called ant forest, you use the app more often, you get more credit. And when it reach certain amount, aliaba will plant a small tree in the desert. People used to be crazy about this shit, but not for now. I guess the main reason is that these effort are good activities, but it didn’t help that much, compared to the effort from the government. At least on the this topic, they did a pretty good job, it last for decades, and it will countinue.
Alipay has another function called zhima credit score, which is related to the ant forest, you can rent bikes and power banks with no deposit when you have a high score. and it’s the base block of so called ‘social credit score’ for Chinese people
Projects around planting trees have often failed, in part from the choice of tree, in part because it takes more than just planting a tree to restore the habitat. It's generally better to work with the existing flora to promote growth and expansion, and/or help the stumps of trees that have been cut-down grow fresh again (e.g. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S5g60g9vmlY)
This is the way
Are you able to find it on Google Maps? Having a hard time locating it.
"Based on the results of this study, the Taklamakan Desert, although only around its rim, represents the first successful model demonstrating the possibility of transforming a desert into a carbon sink," Yung said.
https://www.google.com/maps/place/Taklamakan+Desert/@38.8709...
I believe this is an example https://maps.app.goo.gl/aXtwERHb2pVxEVnV6
Those rows of greenery are the trees planted. They do a ton of this by hand, it's really fascinating.
There's definitely a ring of green around it. If that's all human-made, good for them.
Maybe it's me but I couldn't see it.
Go to the link in GP's post then zoom out.
A lot of the roads that cross the desert look like they're flanked by trees or by some kind scrubby grass mounds. This road is flanked by trees or bushes https://maps.app.goo.gl/JW3gxd8wxSiuwhnZ7
This? https://maps.app.goo.gl/kATdsjnKnkWACzoc6
How much deforestation over the past decades has been reversed and is deforestation currently under control?
Per the article:
> China finished encircling the Taklamakan Desert with vegetation in 2024, and researchers say the effort has stabilized sand dunes and grown forest cover in the country from 10% of its area in 1949 to more than 25% today.
The main problem with attempts at reversing the damage is that forests aren't fungible.
An old growth forest has a rich, balanced ecosystem. Newly planted forests tend to be susceptible to catastrophic damage by various critters, as the species mix is much less complex, and their fauna and flora is relatively impoverished.
So you just need to be stubborn until they stick or cleverer in how you go about it?
So not really a carbon sink but a carbon perimeter.
Probably completely destroys the desert insect biome and consequently avian and reptile population.
And desertification has destroyed many existing biomes. I think, in the grand scheme of things, more forest is better than more desert, so this is a net positive.
An insufficiently nuanced perspective. In the grand scheme of things, when you destroy a biome it's gone forever. Note that China has a recent history of blockheaded moves like this, eg. mobilizing the entire human population to kill all the birds simultaneously across the country during the cultural revolution. India's discussing re-routing the Ganges. Humans never learn.
It's on the edges of the desert, to limit its ongoing expansion, which was directly due to human activity.
And may I ask where would you assume the highest diversity of life exists in a desert?
I would assume that the unchecked human-generated expansion of the desert reduces the diversity of what was previously not desert.
This is not of the slightest interest to any politician in 2026.
Even if that were true, it'd still be a dumb position to take.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dust_Bowl
Exactly.
So to plant a row of trees a bulldozer has to level sand dunes. I somehow doubt the exhaust from this process is factored into the CO2 sink calculation.
https://www.sunbeltrentals.co.uk/news-and-blogs/decrease-you...
> Of course, we know that fuel consumption varies drastically from machine to machine, so we’ve looked at an example of a very high utilisation rate too. We found that an 8T excavator that spent 11 hours and 3 minutes working, 1 hour and 6 minutes of which were idle, it used 89 litres of fuel and resulted in 237.4kgs of carbon emissions. 4 hours saved on that machine would be a total of 84kgs of carbon emissions on average.
https://onetreeplanted.org/blogs/stories/how-much-co2-does-t...
> To determine the amount of carbon dioxide a tree can absorb, we combine average planting densities with a conservative estimate of carbon per hectare to estimate that the average tree absorbs an average of 10 kilograms, or 22 pounds, of carbon dioxide per year for the first 20 years.
As long as they're not taking all day for one tree, I think they'll be OK.
That tree carbon capture estimate is probably conservative here if planting trees achieved de-desertification and resulted a larger thriving ecosystem.