China creates 'man-made oasis' along its longest inland river

China has created a "man-made oasis" along its longest inland river by planting trees and grass and infusing lake water into the lower reaches of the river which had dried up 30 years ago.

In the past seven years, the Tarim River Administration has infused 2.3 billion cubic meters of water from lakes 300 kms away into the 1,321-km river that flows in the arid north-west along the rim of the barren Tarim Basin, a sparsely populated area about the size of Poland.

The waterway is the "mother river" feeding 43.5 square kilometres of oasis inhabited by at least eight million people, 80 per cent of whom are Uygurs.

"The infusion has resumed water flow in the lower reaches and saved the Euphrates poplars from extinction," Xinhua news agency quoted a local official as saying.

The Euphrates poplars with golden leaves of various shapes draw large crowds of tourists and photographers to the Tarim Basin every autumn.

The poplars used to cover 1,33,434 acres in the Tarim Basin in the 1950s. However, excessive cultivation and lack of water pushed the trees to the verge of extinction over the past three decades.

Ambitious land reclamation activities along the river over the past five decades also squandered too much water in irrigation, causing 320 kilometres of the Tarim River in its lower reaches to run dry in the early 1970s and the Taklimakan desert on its south to sprawl faster.

The eight water infusion projects conducted at a cost of over USD one billion since 2000 have expanded the water surface in the lower reaches of the Tarim River by 149 sq kms and 180 sq kms of vegetations have been restored.