Fighting the Sands in Dzorge: An Interdisciplinary Approach to Understanding Desertification on the Eastern Tibetan Plateau

Desertification is widespread in China, creating significant economic losses and concerns about how this form of environmental degradation can be reversed. Here, we bring together remote sensing analyses, oral histories, and interviews to examine the causes and consequences of desertification trends and re-vegetation efforts in Dzorge (Ruoergai) County, Sichuan province, on the eastern Tibetan Plateau. This area contains China's largest wetlands, but drying trends have been rampant in recent decades, with increasing aridity and sand dune expansion generally attributed to climate change, construction of canals to drain wetlands, and overgrazing. Using time series of precipitation data and Landsat images from 1977-2015, we found that rainfall promotes vegetation growth in wetter years, but that bare and sandy ground has increased significantly. During this time period, the government's allocation of land use rights to households also dramatically reduced livestock mobility, creating uneven access to resources and driving vegetation changes at the scale of individual pastures. From local Tibetans' perspectives, government projects to drain wetlands and convert native grasslands to wheat fields, as well as a large gold mine on a nearby sacred mountain, have further increased the vulnerability of these ecosystems to dedgradation. Unlike other re-vegetation efforts in China, which often have perverse environmental effects, a recent restoration project in Dzorge that brought together herders, religious leaders, government officials, and non-governmental organization staff is showing promise, with the restored dunes visible in Landsat imagery, and locals optimistic about the long-term prospects of this collaborative approach.