Why do grasslands degenerate into deserts?
On the grassland, many frequent and unreasonable other human activities may also lead to grassland degradation. 1. Herb picking: Grassland is a natural Chinese herbal medicine garden. Among thousands of plants on the grassland, there are many famous Chinese herbal medicines, such as Radix Astragali, Radix Glycyrrhizae, Herba Ephedrae, Radix Bupleuri, Radix Saposhnikoviae and Rhizoma Anemarrhenae. Most of these Chinese herbal medicines are used as medicine with roots, so to collect them, we must dig roots, which will destroy the grassland, and most of the collectors will leave a deep pit and a pile of loose soil after digging roots. The more holes are dug, the more grassland is destroyed. This provides a large number of sand sources for wind erosion. It is estimated that digging one kilogram of licorice will destroy more than 5 square meters of grassland. 2. Collect economic plants: There are many economic plants with special value on the grassland. A large number of frequent collections will not only destroy this resource itself, but also bring adverse effects to the grassland where it lives. Nostoc commune is one of them. Nostoc flagelliforme only grows in desert grassland areas, where natural conditions are very bad and easy to destroy but difficult to recover. Nostoc flagelliforme will not only destroy the vegetation of desert grassland, but also affect the soil structure and even the whole ecosystem. 3. Mining: There are a lot of underground mineral resources in the grasslands of China, such as coal, oil and ore. In the process of exploiting these underground resources, frequent traffic and human activities, as well as abandoned mines and wastes piled up on the grassland, are also a kind of destruction to the grassland. 4. Rolling of traffic vehicles: China has a vast grassland, which may be a bit desolate in a sense. There are almost no hardened graded highways. Cars and motorcycles run on grasslands, and there are no fixed roads. If they drive like this today and walk like this tomorrow, it will seriously damage grasslands in some areas.