The extreme weather that hit China in recent weeks has damaged
18.6 million hectares of forest in 19 snow-afflicted provincial
regions, the State Forestry Administration announced here
Wednesday.
The total included 6.83 million ha of bamboo, 11.62 million ha
of woods and 15,333 ha of saplings, according to the
administration.
The 19 provincial-level areas plagued by snow and cold weather
were Hunan, Hubei, Anhui, Guangxi, Jiangxi, Guizhou, Henan, Yunnan,
Sichuan, Chongqing, Qinghai, Shaanxi, Gansu, Xinjiang, Zhejiang,
Jiangsu, Fujian, Guangdong and Hainan.
The administration has earmarked 4.3 million yuan (597,200 U.S.
dollars) as a supplement to the 30 million yuan designated by the
Central Government to support forestry sector relief work.
Freaky winter storms have plagued southern China since
mid-January, leading to widespread traffic jams, structural
collapse, blackouts and crop loss. It also killed at least 80
people and affected about 100 million residents, according to the
Ministry of Civil Affairs.
Approximately seven million ha of farmland, mainly located in
the mid and downstream areas of the Yangtze River, was hit by the
snow. About 753,333 million ha lost all their output, according to
Ministry of Agriculture statistics released on Jan. 31.
Experts believed a phenomenon called La Nina aggravated the
freak weather.
Zheng Guoguang, head of China Meteorological Administration,
said earlier that La Nina was a large pool of unusually cold water
in the equatorial Pacific that developed every few years and
influenced global weather. It is the climatic opposite of El Nino,
a warming of the Pacific.
(Xinhua News Agency February 13, 2008)