Hongjiannao - PRC's Biggest Desert Lake - May Have 20 Years Left Before It Disappears - Xinhua

XI'AN, July 27 (Xinhua) -- China's largest desert lake - Hongjiannao - is still shrinking as a result of climate change and human activities, and may vanish in a few decades, experts have warned.

"Just 10 years ago, one couldn't see the other bank of the Hongjiannao even through a telescope. Today, it's visible with the naked eye," He Fenqi, a researcher with the Chinese Academy of Sciences, said at an international seminar on wetland preservation over the weekend in Shenmu County of northwest China's Shaanxi Province.

The Hongjiannao, sandwiched between the Muus Desert in Shaanxi Province and the Erdos Plateau in north China's Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region, has shrunk by at least 30 percent in the past two decades. Its lake area, which measured more than 6,600 hectares in the 1990s, has shrunk to 4,600 hectares, and its water level is declining by 20 centimeters annually.

Geological data shows the water source for the lake is mainly ground water whose level in the past decade has continued to fall and a number of bogs and small lakes around Hongjiannao have disappeared. "Unless adequate measures are taken, Hongjiannao itself may vanish in a few decades, just like the Lop Nur in the northwestern Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region," said Chen Kelin, China director of Wetlands International NGO.

EDIT

http://news.xinhuanet.com/english/2009-07/27/content_11781336.htm

but ample amounts of airborne soil. I think the new dustbowls we're building will put the '30s in the shade.