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 | Thursday, April 27, 2000, updated at 16:12(GMT+8) | ||||||||||||
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Ecological Protection Demanded in ChinaBeijing, Tianjin, Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region, Shanxi and Hebei provinces in northern China are suffering from strong dusty winds at scale of 5-6 on April 6.The clouds of dust have reduced visibility to one kilometer, even less than 100 meters in some areas and have thus brought inconveniences to daily life and communications in areas the dusty storm rampages. Sources from concerned meteorological departments say that the rolling clouds of dust, originating from the deserts of Inner Mongolia, is the sixth and biggest sandstorm so far since March this year. Meteorologists say a prolonged drought is to blame for the sandstorm weather. Last year, China's northern areas had suffered from a long spell of drought and there has been merely 325 mm of rainfall in Beijing region throughout the year, the least in one decade. What's more, there is only 25 mm rainfall in Zhangjiakou, Chengde of Hebei Province and some areas of Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region since the spring began this year, a 30% less of rainfall over the same period last year. A deteriorating ecological environment is another cause of the dusty storm. According to State Forest Administration, desertification has led to an annual loss of 2,460 square kilometers of land by China. For a warm world weather and human's destruction of forests, excessive grazing and use of water resources the desertification area has come to involve a 40% of the Chinese land. In recent years, sandstorms in northern China have escalated in their seriousness and frequency, from 8 times in the 1960's to 20 times over past decade, with an increased amount of land suffered and serious damages brought. Chief of Prevention and Cure of Desertification Office of State Forestry Administration and also Professor from China's Forestry Science Institute Ci Longjun lately issued the call for ecological environment protection. Increased deteriorated sandstorms give us the warning that we should lose no time to prevent and bring desertification under effective control, he demanded.
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