“China has finished a 46-year campaign to encircle its largest desert with trees, part of national efforts to end desertification and curb the sandstorms that plague parts of the country during the spring, state media reported on Friday.

A ‘green belt’ of about 3,000 km (2,000 miles) around the Taklamakan was completed on Thursday in the northwestern region of Xinjiang, after workers planted the final 100 metres of trees on the desert’s southern edge, the Communist Party-run People’s Daily said…

Tree planting in the arid northwest has helped bring China’s total forest coverage above 25% by the end of last year, up from around 10% in 1949.”

From Reuters.