The Jiuquan Satellite Launch Center has turned the desert zone where it is built into an eco- friendly city where flowers, grass and other plants thrive in late autumn.
More than 60 oases have emerged in the Gobi desert since the center was founded in 1958, in Jiuquan, northwest China.
It is hard to imagine the scene of the riverside city with flourishing vegetation appearing in the extremely arid desert where the annual rainfall is 40 mm while annual evaporation is over 3,600 mm.
Zhang Yujiang, deputy director of the center, said the authorities of the center had made improvement and protection of the local ecological environment a priority.
The center launched the ecological improvement efforts on the chance that the State Council added the site to a state-level management project of the Heihe River that flows through the area. It took effective measures to preserve natural bush and wood plantations through irrigation, fenced cultivation, fire prevention and the treatment of diseases and insect pests harming forests of diversiform-leaved poplars.
The center invested heavily in building three separate zones -- the launch technological zone, the red willow and poplar zone, and the urban zone -- to form a desert city with unique scenery and a pleasant environment.
After decades of environmental improvements, the center has created more than 60 oases, with an average 600 square meters of vegetation for each person working or living there. The center now has the Dongfeng Natural Park, the Railway Park, a sculpture park and a swimming pool, and is building a World Park.
(Xinhua News Agency October 12, 2003)
