The Dalad Banner part of the Kubuqi Desert, the seventh largest desert in China, has seen remarkable progress in its environmental and ecological restoration in recent years.

The once-barren land -- which covers an area of 18,600 square kilometers -- is located in the Ordos Plateau in North China's Inner Mongolia autonomous region.

Results of the fifth national desertification land monitoring survey show that the Kubuqi desert within the jurisdiction of Dalad Banner is 150 kilometers long from east to west, with an average width of 19 kilometers. It covers an area of 290,000 hectares, accounting for 20.5 percent of the total desert area.

For a long time, the Kubuqi Desert has been continuously expanding outward, devouring pastures, cultivated land, and villages.

Combined with man-made indiscriminate deforestation and overgrazing, it has led to grassland degradation and land desertification, forcing many people to leave their homes and migrate to other places.

However, Dalad Banner has managed to curb the desert's expansion through comprehensive treatment methods such as building shelterbelts, setting up sand barriers, and planting trees for afforestation.

Since 2000, Dalad Banner has completed 3.75 million mu (250,000 hectares) of grassland construction and 2.55 million mu of water and soil conservation treatment. The total water and soil conservation comprehensive management area has now covered an area of 4.81million mu.

The degree of soil erosion control has increased from 20.3 percent to the current 51.1 percent, and the number of days with sandy or dusty weather has dropped from 22 to seven per year.

Between 2000 and 2019, the forest area of Dalad Banner increased from 1.25 million mu to 3.68 million mu, the forest coverage rate increased from 10.2 percent to 28.9 percent, and the vegetation coverage rate increased from 64.4 percent to 78.8 percent.