1980s

On the Alxa Plateau of Inner Mongolia, Gaxun Nur Lake (262 km²) dried in the 1970s and the Sogo Nur Lake in the 1980s.

Mr. Zhang said a main goal of moving people from Xihaigu was to turn the hills green, with a parallel planting program. More than two million acres have been converted to forest and pasture land, he said, citing the Guyuan area, where forest coverage was 22 percent last year, up from 4 percent in the 1980s.

Stepnohirsk grew into a town from the village of Sukhoivanivka in the 1980s after vast deposits of manganese ore nearby were discovered.