The Jiuquan Satellite Launch Center has turned the desert
zone where it is built into an eco- friendly city where flowers,
grass and other plants thrive in late autumn.
More than 60 oases have emerged in the Gobi desert since the
center was founded in 1958, in Jiuquan, northwest China.
It is hard to imagine the scene of the riverside city with
flourishing vegetation appearing in the extremely arid desert where
the annual rainfall is 40 mm while annual evaporation is over 3,600
mm.
Zhang Yujiang, deputy director of the center, said the
authorities of the center had made improvement and protection of
the local ecological environment a priority.
The center launched the ecological improvement efforts on the
chance that the State Council added the site to a state-level
management project of the Heihe River that flows through the area.
It took effective measures to preserve natural bush and wood
plantations through irrigation, fenced cultivation, fire prevention
and the treatment of diseases and insect pests harming forests of
diversiform-leaved poplars.
The center invested heavily in building three separate zones --
the launch technological zone, the red willow and poplar zone, and
the urban zone -- to form a desert city with unique scenery and a
pleasant environment.
After decades of environmental improvements, the center has
created more than 60 oases, with an average 600 square meters of
vegetation for each person working or living there. The center now
has the Dongfeng Natural Park, the Railway Park, a sculpture park
and a swimming pool, and is building a World Park.
(Xinhua News Agency October 12, 2003)
