Outside a cafe in east Beijing, a small bird fluttered to the ground and hopped and pecked at the concrete. Beijing Bird Watching Society member Li Ming cracked a smile and said “Passer montanus.” A humble sparrow, which Li says is the city’s most common bird, with the magpie a close second.

You can find both species in the Illustrated Guide to Wild Birds of Beijing (北京野鸟图鉴) published in 2000. The book contains photos and descriptions of 276 species, but Li says he and his fellow bird watchers reckon there are now 430 species in the city and the surrounding countryside if you include migrants that only come for the summer.

On Twitter, Stuart Morris conspiracy-theorised about the increase: “perhaps some birds have been released for the same reason miners used to take canaries underground.”

But while numbers and diversity may have risen since 2000, there has been a backward slide in the last two years or so, according to a pair of graduate students who have been monitoring bird populations in the Olympic Forest Park. From the Danwei article:

… Over the two years of observation Cheng and Xing Shuang have seen the number of species and their populations decrease; Mandarin ducks wintering at the park, one of the bellwether species mentioned by Xie, have fallen from a peak of around 200, probably thanks to subway construction around the park’s water area ….

… Meanwhile changes in how buildings are designed have put Beijing’s swallows and swifts in a tough spot: the awnings and eaves of older buildings they once relied on for nesting nooks have been replaced by the sleek facades of high rise apartments and office buildings. As Beijing sprawls outward, the marshlands that the birds rely on for nest-building materials are retreating, Cheng said. The city is expanding and restructuring into a landscape that is increasingly inhospitable to its airborne residents.

© Samuel Wade for China Digital Times (CDT), 2011. | Permalink | No comment | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: air quality, Beijing, Bird's nest, bird-watching, danwei, deforestation, dust storms, Olympics venues, sandstorms
Download Tools to Circumvent the Great Firewall

By Saturday, the storm had spread over an area of 810,000 sq km (313,000 sq miles) with a population of 250 million, state news agency Xinhua reported.

It was expected to last until Monday, the meteorological agency said in a statement on its website.

Guo Hu, head of Beijing’s meteorological agency, said the storm came from the deserts of Inner Mongolia.

© Sophie Beach for China Digital Times (CDT), 2010. | Permalink | No comment | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: air pollution, Beijing Olympics 2008, deforestation, sandstorms
Download Tools to Circumvent the Great Firewall

[Sean] Gallagher traveled to the Ningxia Hui Autonomous Region in northern China to document the rapid advance of its deserts. The sandstorm offered a visual feast for a young photographer. For the residents, however, it was an all-too-common occurrence. Sandstorms have forced the relocation of 200,000 people to Hongsibao, a new city built from scratch by the government. “China spent vast amounts of money on this environmental refugee town that I photographed, on a massive relocation project and on trying to reclaim the land,” Mr. Gallagher said. “The problem is that — because of the size of China — the issue is so vast. Even for an organization like the Chinese Communist Party, it’s a big project.”

© Sophie Beach for China Digital Times (CDT), 2009. | Permalink | No comment | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: desertification, Ningxia, photographs, sandstorms
Download Tools to Circumvent the Great Firewall

To date, Chinese farmers and herders have transformed about 400,000 square kilometres of cropland and verdant prairie into new deserts. The shepherds have overgrazed the steppes, allowing their sheep and goats to chew the grass all the way down to its roots. The farmers, for their part, have over-exploited the arable land by opening fragile grasslands to cultivation and over-pumping rivers and aquifers in the oases bordering the ancient deserts. The area of desert thus created is equivalent to more than half the farmland in Canada.

The soil, once it is barren, is swept up by the wind into dust storms, battering the capital, Beijing, and then moving on to Korea and Japan. The most massive of the yellow clouds of dust make their way across the Pacific and reach North America. The loss of precious topsoil for Chinese agriculture ends up polluting both China’s cities and countries halfway around the world.

The North American “dust bowl” of the 1930s forced three million farmers to abandon their land in the Midwest and the Canadian prairies. But the Chinese exodus could reach well into the tens of millions. Governmental relocation programs for ecological refugees are already in full swing.

© Sophie Beach for China Digital Times (CDT), 2008. | Permalink | No comment | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: agriculture, desertification, sandstorms
Download Tools to Circumvent the Great Firewall

“It’s much more than a landscape surrendering to the sand,” says J. Carl Ganter, director of Circle of Blue, the journalism-based news, science and collaborative project covering water issues worldwide. “We’re looking at a crucial international economic and environmental story that has implications for us all.”

As China prepares for the Summer Olympic Games in August, international focus on its air pollution is increasing. The main target is to reduce urban smog from car and coal emissions, but China’s sand storms are an equal threat to air quality and human health. They are often driven by 80 mile-per-hour winds that last for days. These storms, along with the water shortages and the land degradation causing them, underscore the extreme stress that China’s economic development is putting on its environment and its 1.3 billion people.

“Reign of Sand” comes as China’s spring dust storms approach. Scientists say the severity and frequency of the dust storms reflect worsening conditions: Dryer climate, stronger winds, water shortages, over-grazing, population growth, and a clash between nomadic herders and the government over range and farmland management.

The preview video below offers a hint of the full online package, which documents the situation through an interactive map, video and photo galleries, as well as feature articles.

See more China Digital Times coverage of China’s environmental crisis.

Photo: Palani Mohan, Getty Images, for Circle of Blue
Video: Eric Daigh, for Circle Blue

© Rhyen Coombs for China Digital Times (CDT), 2008. | Permalink | One comment | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: desertification, Inner Mongolia, sandstorms, videos
Download Tools to Circumvent the Great Firewall

Western China is turning into a massive dust bowl. Desertification now affects fully one-third of the world’s population — and what’s happening in Western China represents the largest conversion of productive land to desert anywhere in the world, consuming over one million acres of land each year. The dust isn’t confined to the west: every spring, massive sandstorms roar through Beijing, blanketing the city with tons of dust.

The October issue of the Canadian magazine The Walrus has an excellent feature by Patrick Alleyn on efforts to combat desertification in China (subscription-only, but 10-day trials are available). Benoit Aquin’s startling photos, which accompany the article, have been circulating on Chinese bulletin boards. [Full Text]

© Xiao Qiang for China Digital Times (CDT), 2007. | Permalink | No comment | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: desertification, sandstorms
Download Tools to Circumvent the Great Firewall

“China has raised the environmental alarm bell after a survey found over a quarter of its land has become desert, with much of the damage caused by human activity. Desertification has affected 28 per cent of China’s land mass, with 18 per cent of the country turning to waste through the effects of overgrazing, deforestation and other ravages, the China Daily said, citing a State Forestry Administration survey. The report followed another survey last week which showed soil erosion affected 37 per cent of China’s land”.

And here are some images of villages, houses, towns and cities in sandstorms, caused by the increasingly severe desertification, from the popular overseas Chinese BBS: wenxueciti.com:

(...)
Read the rest of Slideshow: Desertification and Sandstorms in China – Wenxuecity (31 words)

© Xiao Qiang for China Digital Times (CDT), 2007. | Permalink | No comment | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: desertification, sandstorms, slideshow
Download Tools to Circumvent the Great Firewall

The Great Wall of China , built to withstand raiding hordes from the steppes, is now in peril from a far more insidious threat: sandstorms generated by desertification in the country’s north-west.

The Great Wall of China, built to withstand raiding hordes from the steppes, is now in peril from a far more insidious threat: sandstorms generated by desertification in the country’s north-west. The wall was built over several dynasties and despite its failure to prevent invasions, it has become a national symbol. Each dynasty favoured different construction methods, and a 40-mile section built during the Han dynasty , which used mostly packed earth bricks, is now being swept away. [Full Text]

[Image: A man walks past the remains of the western-most tower of the Great Wall of China, by Greg Baker from AP.]

© Kate Zhao for China Digital Times (CDT), 2007. | Permalink | No comment | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: Great Wall, sandstorms
Download Tools to Circumvent the Great Firewall

…”Frequent storms not only eroded the mud, but also cracked the wall and caused it to collapse or break down,” Xinhua quoted archaeologist Zhou Shengrui as saying.

One of the most threatened sections of the wall runs through Minqin county in Gansu province along the ancient Silk Road trade route. Unlike the better-known stone and brick sections around Beijing, the wall in Gansu is made of less-resilient packed earth that easily erodes….[Full Text]

[Image: Hikers walk on a crumbling section of the Great Wall north of Beijing, via MSNBC]

© Sophia Cao for China Digital Times (CDT), 2007. | Permalink | No comment | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: Gansu, Great Wall, sandstorms
Download Tools to Circumvent the Great Firewall

(...)
Read the rest of Video: Stephen Colbert and the Chinese goats – Danwei (12 words)

© Sophia Cao for China Digital Times (CDT), 2007. | Permalink | No comment | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: environmental protection, foreign correspondents, natural resources, sandstorms, videos
Download Tools to Circumvent the Great Firewall