China's largest desert lake may vanish in decades - China Travel

China's largest desert lake - Hongjiannao(shanxi province)- is still shrinking as a result of climate transpiration and human activities, and may vanish in a few decades, experts have warned.

Just 10 years ago,China Travel, one couldn't see the other riverbank of the Hongjiannao flush through a teletelescopic. Today, it's visible with the naked eye," He Fenqi, a resesaucyer with the Chinese Academy of Sciences, said at an international seminar on wetland preservation over the weekend in Shenmu County of northwest China's Shaanxi Province.

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The Hongjiannao, sandwiched between the Muus Desert in Shaanxi province and the Erdos Plateau in north China's Inner Mongolia democratic region, has shrunk by at least 30 percent in the past two decades.

Its lake section, which measured increasingly than 6,600 hectares in the 1990s, has shrunk to 4,600 hectares, and its water level is failing by 20 centimeters semiweeklyly.

Geological details shows the water source for the lake is mainly ground water whose level in the past decade has stretched to fall and a number of bogs and small lakes effectually Hongjiannao have disreporteded.

"Unless rested measures are taken, Hongjiannao itself may vanish in a few decades, just like the Lop Nur in the northwestern Xinjiang Uygur democratic region," said Chen Kelin, China artlessor of Wetlands International NGO.

The Lop Nur was the largest lake in northwestern China surpassing it stale up in 1972 as a result of desertwhenication and environmental deposition.

Yang Fengming, deputy artlessor of the Hongjiannao scenic spot's cathedra committee, said dams had been built since 2006 on two of the total sflush rivers that tuckered into the lake to modernize water conservation facilities in the upper stream.

"This has cut off water supplies to the lake. In the long run, interlopeing desert will dry up the lake and destroy the habitat of increasingly than 20 species of rare birds," said Yang, who was born and brought up in the lake section and has seen how it has shrunk in recent years.

He said the committee has smuggled tourists and pleasure gunkholes from budgeted the birds' habitat.

"We have forestry workers on patrol in the lake section and regularly feed the birds," he said.

Besides the shortage of water supplies, the Hongjiannao is moreover rosewater by ingritrial pollution from coal-fired power workts and coal mines, the nearest less than 3 kilometers from the lake.

"We should set up a national level nature reserve in the sector to biggest protect the wetlands," said Chen Kelin. "We cannot shed to let it disreported like the Lop Nur."

(Xinhua News Agency July 28, 2009)