A desert in China's Inner Mongolia that has the highest sand dunes in the world holds a vast store of underground water which, if used wisely, could ease the chronic water shortage afflicting the north of the country, a study says.
Scientists based in China, Australia and Britain scratched just 20cm below the surface of the dunes in the Badain Jaran desert, in western Inner Mongolia, and were stunned to find abundant moisture.
The discovery explains how these dunes, at up to 500m tall the highest in the world, can survive bone-dry, windy conditions.
"This water is likely to be acting as a cohesion agent, providing the dunes with resistance against wind erosion and transportation," the scientists wrote in the British weekly journal Nature yesterday.
Badain Jaran has just 40mm of rainfall a year, but evaporation from the dune is five times that amount.
The researchers say the source for the replenishment comes not from the 72 lakes that dot Badain Jaran's unique landscape.
The evidence is that it comes from snowmelt on Qilian Mountain, which lies 500km away to the southwest.
This precious water percolates through faults in the mountain's rocky roots and then seeps through deep carbonate layers, eventually reaching the dunes and the lakes.
According to their calculation, 500 million cubic meters could be extracted from the desert ground-water every year.
That would make it a cheaper and more practical alternative to a proposed water-diversion project in areas north of Qilian Mountain, costing US$500 million, that would have an annual capacity of 25 million cubic meters.
The team, led by Ling Li at the University of Queensland and China's Hohai University in Nanjing, caution that the extraction would have to be done on a sustainable basis.
"Any resulting dune mobilization could severely affect the regional eco-environment," they said.
Eleven people, including a former minister, were arrested in Serbia on Friday over a train station disaster in which 16 people died. The concrete canopy of the newly renovated station in the northern city of Novi Sad collapsed on Nov. 1, 2024 in a disaster widely blamed on corruption and poor oversight. It sparked a wave of student-led protests and led to the resignation of then-Serbian prime minister Milos Vucevic and the fall of his government. The public prosecutor’s office in Novi Sad opened an investigation into the accident and deaths. In February, the public prosecutor’s office for organized crime opened another probe into
RISING RACISM: A Japanese group called on China to assure safety in the country, while the Chinese embassy in Tokyo urged action against a ‘surge in xenophobia’ A Japanese woman living in China was attacked and injured by a man in a subway station in Suzhou, China, Japanese media said, hours after two Chinese men were seriously injured in violence in Tokyo. The attacks on Thursday raised concern about xenophobic sentiment in China and Japan that have been blamed for assaults in both countries. It was the third attack involving Japanese living in China since last year. In the two previous cases in China, Chinese authorities have insisted they were isolated incidents. Japanese broadcaster NHK did not identify the woman injured in Suzhou by name, but, citing the Japanese
RESTRUCTURE: Myanmar’s military has ended emergency rule and announced plans for elections in December, but critics said the move aims to entrench junta control Myanmar’s military government announced on Thursday that it was ending the state of emergency declared after it seized power in 2021 and would restructure administrative bodies to prepare for the new election at the end of the year. However, the polls planned for an unspecified date in December face serious obstacles, including a civil war raging over most of the country and pledges by opponents of the military rule to derail the election because they believe it can be neither free nor fair. Under the restructuring, Myanmar’s junta chief Min Aung Hlaing is giving up two posts, but would stay at the
YELLOW SHIRTS: Many protesters were associated with pro-royalist groups that had previously supported the ouster of Paetongtarn’s father, Thaksin, in 2006 Protesters rallied on Saturday in the Thai capital to demand the resignation of court-suspended Thai Prime Minister Paetongtarn Shinawatra and in support of the armed forces following a violent border dispute with Cambodia that killed more than three dozen people and displaced more than 260,000. Gathered at Bangkok’s Victory Monument despite soaring temperatures, many sang patriotic songs and listened to speeches denouncing Paetongtarn and her father, former Thai prime minister Thaksin Shinawatra, and voiced their backing of the country’s army, which has always retained substantial power in the Southeast Asian country. Police said there were about 2,000 protesters by mid-afternoon, although
RSS