China has planted so many trees it's changed the entire country's water distribution (www.livescience.com)

submitted 3 months ago by schizoidman@lemmy.zip to c/world@lemmy.world

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China's biggest tree-planting effort is the Great Green Wall in the country's arid and semi-arid north. Started in 1978, the Great Green Wall was created to slow the expansion of deserts. Over the last five decades, it has helped grow forest cover from about 10% of China's area in 1949 to more than 25%

Collectively, China's ecosystem restoration initiatives account for 25% of the global net increase in leaf area between 2000 and 2017.

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[-] Nurse_Robot@lemmy.world 10 points 3 months ago

"Even though the water cycle is more active, at local scales more water is lost than before," Staal said.

This has important implications for water management, because China's water is already unevenly distributed. The north has about 20% of the country's water but is home to 46% of the population and 60% of the arable land, according to the study. The Chinese government is trying to address this; however, the measures will likely fail if water redistribution due to regreening isn't taken into account, Staal and his colleagues argued.

[-] velindora@lemmy.cafe -1 points 3 months ago

Look at that, China fucking up the entire ecosystem

[-] SlippiHUD@lemmy.world 4 points 3 months ago

I'm not sure that's really the take away. Its just that greening an area doesn't always result in local benefits. But that evaporation will eventually come down somewhere. Upwards of 4,000 miles away.

If we all rebuilt historical forests we would all benefit.

It's like if you're a sewage treatment plant, the better job you do, the more you help people down stream, but it still doesn't do anything about upstream problems.

[-] Armillarian@pawb.social 3 points 3 months ago

The benefit of forest is still there, and I'm glad they discover a problem it can potentially caused so that any other country that wish to replicate this can do a better planning

[-] theolodis@feddit.org 1 points 3 months ago

Did you read the article? They planted the trees to prevent soil erosion, which worked seemingly well, and overall China has more water now, just unevenly distributed.

Nothing they couldn't fix, and a great example of what can be achieved if a country makes a plan and goes through with it.

[-] shalafi@lemmy.world 2 points 3 months ago

The one good thing about China's authoritarianism is that they can plan and execute over the long term. Meanwhile, in America, we can implode over the course of a couple of years.

[-] Dearth@lemmy.world 3 points 3 months ago

Chinese authoritarianism is more effective at improving the lives of more people than American authoritarianism

this post was submitted on 05 Dec 2025

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