China's New Deserts

The lands around the Yellow River are turning to sand.

- I​​​​an Teh

From madoi County, a settlement near the headwater of the Yellow River, our two-car convoy headed out to visit a desert Yang Yong first viewed through binoculars in 1997. At the time, the geologist had seen a small, wind-blown patch of sand surrounded by greenery.

This time, Yang looked out past a stretch of sloping grassland to where a new desert extended beyond the horizon. That sandy expanse, Yang told me, was where we would spend the night.

Yang, now sixty, is one of China’s most prominent environmentalists. For nearly thirty years, he has studied environmental changes in the Tibetan plateau, in particular the region where the Yellow, Yangtze, and Mekong Rivers originate. Using satellite images, remote sensing, and data collected on expeditions, he and his crew are documenting the degradation of lands along the headwaters of China’s major rivers. In May 2018, I joined Yang on an expedition to capture the transformation of the Yellow River and its surrounding landscapes.