China is installing a multi-million-yuan water level monitoring system along its longest inland waterway, the Tarim River, to control the flow in a bid to save the river from disappearing.

Cameras and sensors are being installed at water control junctions and reservoir floodgates along the 1,321-km-long Tarim River, which rims the northern edge of the Taklamakan Desert, China's largest desert in farwest Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region.

Engineers sitting in a central control room will use the data to manage the flow and allocate water to each reservoir, officials with the regional government's development and reform commission said Monday.

The Tarim River, which traverses Taklamakan, has been the main water source sustaining the more than 8 million people living in oases clustered along its banks and in an alluvial plain downstream.

The Tarim's water source comes from melting snow on the towering mountain ranges of Tianshan and Kunlun that sandwich the Taklamakan Desert in the north and south.

But in recent years, the downstream section of the river has often dried up during low-water periods as a result of increased human activities, unregulated use of water and climate change.

The regional government has carried out a program of "rationing use of irrigation water" to save water from the Tarim since 2002. However, the the lack of advanced administration measures hampers the efforts.

"The new monitoring system will help us improve the management of limited water resources. With it, we can use reservoirs' floodgates in a more reasonably way," said Wang Yongqin, a senior engineer in charge of the project.

Wang said the project, estimated to cost 92.66 million yuan (14.59 million U.S. dollars), is to be funded by central and regional government.

The engineer said the first phase of the project includes 13 water control junctions and reservoir floodgates. And the dilapidated facilities of the junctions and floodgates will also be replaced.

While the equipment is not sophisticated, it is a technological "Great Leap Forward" for a remote and underdeveloped region like Xinjiang, Wang said.

She added that a similar remote monitoring system has proven effective in maintaining the flow of the Yellow River that travels from Qinghai-Tibetan Plateau in the northwest all the way across north China to enter the ocean from eastern Shandong Province.

Since 2001, the Chinese government has invested at least 10.7 billion yuan to restore the ecosystem of the Tarim River. Adopted measures include water diversion, waterway enhancement, construction of reservoirs and underground water systems.

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