Duststorm

Why is the duststorm in the northern and northwestern China getting severer ?

There are many reasons why the dust storms in northern and northwestern China become severer. But generally we can conclude all the reasons into two major reasons, the nature reason and the human reason. For the nature reason, since northern china is in a dry and mid-dry environment, the stability of the ecosystem is very bad. Furthermore, the soil in that area is sandy. The layer of soil is loose and the vegetation is frangible. So it has a low ability to protect itself from the eroding of wind. When the weather becomes dry, there are more activities from the sand blown by wind. The result of these activities is the expansion of desert and the sparseness of vegetation which cause more dust storms. For the human reason, because of the population boom, it is very difficult for the frangible ecosystem to support the huge demand of food, water and so on. Although the government carries out a lot of policies, people just do things in their own way. They burn the forest to get more land. They depasture animals on grassland without limitation. When the land becomes sandy and not arable, they just give it up and choose another place. Finally, all the land becomes sandy which causes dust storms when the weather is windy. A very ironical phenomenon is that the government planted thousands of trees. But a few years later people in that area cut them down in order to get the firewood. At last all the residents have to move to other places for the expansion of desert. Some people still haven’t realized the ponderance of protecting the environment while they are getting the benefits from nature. That’s why some environmental problems still cannot be solved today.