Observation, interview, and comparison covering 7 million square kilometers and traveling hundreds of thousands of kilometers over ten years in China and Canada, using site photography, drone photography, satellite image analysis, and a small amount of disclosure engineering.
Directional winds create unique landforms
The three geographic stages in China
They are from southwest Tibet to east Beijing and Tianjin, i.e., high to low. Scientists divide this vast area, 5000 km across, into three stages according to their altitude (Fig. 1a). The Tibet plateau, with over 4000 meters above sea level, is the 1st stage. The 2nd stage has a vast area between 4000 and 1000 meters with about 4.5 million square kilometers. The height of the Taihang Mount (Fig. 1a) is from 500 to 1000 meters above sea level, the transitional zone between the East and West of China. The 3rd stage is in the East, where densely populated and industrially developed compared to the West of China. The directional wind in China is mostly NWW to SEE, that is from high to low altitude. The development direction of the following three landforms is consistent with the direction of the wind blowing.
Tablemount on land
The Guyot landform, tablemount, is a flat-topped cone on the Pacific seafloor found in 1946 [1] [2] [3], but the tablemount on land is rare. Groups of flat top cones (Fig. 2a-c, Fig. 1a for the location) exist along the edge of the basaltic lava platform in Xilinhot League, Inner Mongol Autonomous Region of China. The studies by different geological methods have confirmed these flat-topped cones are not volcanic ones, having characteristics that their tops do not have vents that would be lower at the center than their edges if they are volcanoes, their tops have irregular shapes, their heights are same as the platform from which cones evolved. Furthermore, the cones compose of two layers with basaltic layer of 9 meters in thickness on the top and sandstones at the base discovered by digging, the formation of Late Cretaceous [4]. The exciting thing is that three kinds of cones are in an arrangement from near to away from the basaltic platform, which is "connected to the platform (C)," "separated (S)," and "dwarf mount (D)" (Fig. 2a-c), showing they are from younger to older and the oldest, D, will disappear soon (Fig. 3). The directional winds formed through the rift, subsidence in the area, become stronger (the small arrows in Fig. 1a), as the primary erosion agent creates the tablemount on land.
Boat-shaped Yardang landform
The internationally accepted landform “Yardang” has origin in Uygur language, Xinjiang of China. The word is the formal expression in the early 20th century, meaning a weathering landform, mainly ridge-like, castle-like or hill-like in extremely arid region. The boat-shaped Yardang landform (Fig. 2d) extends along the directional wind in many locations in a vast area of Inner Mongolia, China. The yearly directional wind is carving from fissures to ditches on sedimentary rocks.
Layer-fissured granite
Rare in the world, the landform is located at Xilinhot League, a prefecture in the Inner Mongol Autonomous Region of China, where the government built the geologic park. Many locations in the region have “layer-fissured granite” (Fig. 2e, Fig. 1a for the location). Looking from a distance, people might judge these granitoid rocks had layers as sedimentary rocks. However, the granite is compact with composite minerals arranged in a state of disorder. The fissure in the granite extends parallel to the terrain trend, which angle accords up and down with the hill slope. These fissures are resulted from carving by directional wind blowing with sand, indicating the wind is so strong in these regions.
Directional winds result in unhealthy atmosphere in the East
The DH days in the East
PM2.5, an index parameter for measuring air, has a particle size less than or equal to 2.5 µ. Although the delicate particulate matter is only a small component of the Earth's atmospheric composition, it significantly impacts air quality and visibility since it may contain many toxic and harmful substances that directly affect atmospheric environmental quality near the Earth's surface [5]. When a 1 ~ 8 km thick dust cloud blowing from the West (Fig. 1a) forms a hood above the East, industrial and automotive exhausts cannot disperse. Toxic gases stay near the surface of this area for a longer time. The DH day pattern in China is generally less in the West, more in the East (Fig. 1b-c), more in urban areas, and more in the winter and spring seasons between Nov. and April. When the dust hood is over a city, the weather atmosphere becomes terrible with poor circulation, especially without cold winds during winter, unfavorable for pollutant diffusion and zonal pollutant area forms. The abnormally high amount of NOx during the DH episodes, produced by fossil fuel combustion and vehicle emissions, played a direct role in the rapid secondary transformation of SOx into sulfate aerosols. SOx, NOx, and other primary gas pollutants transformed into secondary aerosols (e.g., sulfate and nitrate) through heterogeneous reactions on the surface of carbon-containing ultrafine particles [6]. Significant regional affections exist in the impact of PM2.5 pollution on public health [7].
The forestation blockage surrounding the northwest edge failed
In the past 30 years, China has invested a lot of money and workforce in the afforestation and desertification control on the north edge of the 3rd stage and urban forestation. The local governments (Beijing, Tianjin Cities, and Hebei province) have invested over 50 billion yuan since 2000 to have built protective forests, covering 200 km2 (Fig. 1a), with over one hundred million people participated. The data in recent years show DH days are still going on (Fig. 1b-c). The foresting approach might improve the local atmosphere only, which definitely could not reduce DH days and times of sandstorms coming from the West. Without dealing with the dust source in the 2nd stage (the red line cycle in Fig. 1a), the local effort can only slightly change the local weather and create visional effects. The green block (Fig. 1a) has failed in retarding any amount of soil movement from the West to the East, since the dusty strata in the air move primarily up to 1–8 km high. Beijing, Shijiazhuang, Chengdu, etc. cities (Fig. 1a) are located beside mountain ranges which cause poor air circulation [8]. The situation of soil and sandstorm spreading to the East and the formation of the worst pollutant days occurred during the four months of 2023 (Fig. 4a-d). To alleviate the haze affection, artificial precipitation in urban haze areas was adopted to mitigate DH effects [9], but the author thinks the approach is only creating temporary moisture and fresh air locally, not solving the root problem.
The research [10] on the eonian-sand section in Yulin (Fig. 1a for the location) tells that in the early Holocene (11500 ~ 10000 BP), magnetic susceptibility, clay, and silt content increased gradually and relatively humid, expanding vegetation coverage, not much sandstorm happened during the period of 10000 and 4500 BP. Since nearly 3000 years ago, significant climate aridity has come back with coarsening of sandstorm sediments, which is probably reacting from human activities that are central to environmental changes.
The key point is to keep moisture in the soil of the 2nd stage
Scientists unanimously believe the Republic of Mongolia to be the source of sandstorms, which happens a few times a year. The author think that the country is not a primary agent that makes the dust hood every day for the East of China. The coalition with the Republic of Mongolia would help decrease times of stormy weather and may reduce soil and sand movement to the East.
When the windy days happened in the area in the 2nd stage delineated by the red line in Fig. 1a, including Qinghai, Gansu, Ningxia, Inner Mongolia, Shaanxi, Shanxi provinces, and part of the Taihang Mountains of Hebei province, arid area in China, the unhealthy atmospheric sky covered the East. The soil and dust could ascend to 1–8 km high in the West by wind picked up and raised by human activities (Fig. 4e-h) in the dry area. For instance, just a jeep running can raise loose soil to 1–8 km high. Think about it, if a tornado in the Midwest of the United States occurs in arid areas without much moisture in the topsoil, the entire United States would be shrouded in DH pollution days for several months. The author has noticed that when rainfall in northwest China began, no DH occurred for several days in the East (Fig. 1d). Decreasing soil rise by keeping moisture in the topsoil in this vast area in the 2nd stage is a key that can reduce the dust hood to the East, further decrease DH days for the East.
The rock in the western mountain in China will break and eventually move to the East, which is inevitable, but humans can take various methods to alleviate it. In ancient China, farmers rolled stone tubes temporarily to compact the topsoil after the autumn harvest to prevent it from being swept up by the wind. Unfortunately, nowadays, peasants have abandoned this method. Biodegradation is another way of keeping moisture in the soil, i.e., returning carbon-hydro compounds such as plant leaves and branches or crop branches by shredding them back into the ground. However, this method has yet to be used in the area of the 2nd and 3rd stages. In the rural area in the 2nd and the 3rd stage, it is common to see that peasants burn crops or tree branches at night, even during day time (Fig. 4i-j) for cooking, warming, or other purposes, is a result of smoke floating to the East and covering the East during the daytime. The author investigates a broad part of these regions for years in China and finds there is no law or regulation related to biodegradation, no crushing machines (Fig. 5a-d) to have been used, and residents and peasants treat plants as garbage (Fig. 4k-p).
'Biodegradation' here refers to shrinking, by using machines, leaves, branches, trunks, and debris grass, as well as straw from sunflowers, sorghum, corn, etc., into centimeters in size (Fig. 5e), and biological effects appear as fertilizers (Fig. 5f-h) generated during accumulation (Fig. 5j-k). Finally, Organic soil with reduced volume to black, in which way when back to soil increasing moisture and carbon in the top soils to be less picked up by wind. The degradation methods are moisture conservation practices, restoring the C (carbon) element to nature.
China should learn from Canada
Located in the southern part of Alberta, Canada, and to the East of the Rocky Mountains, Calgary City has won awards in the World's Best Livable City Awards every year. The cities nearby the Rocky Mountains suffer directional winds every year from the Rocky Mountains. However, to keep moisture in the topsoil, all provincial governments legislate biodegradation by law (Fig. 5i) that materials such as tree leaves or brunches are not garbage and should be degraded and returned to nature (soils) (Fig. 5L-n). There are shredding centers to deal with these materials if residents cannot crush them by their machines or hiring professional companies to process tree or shrub branches or leaves. The degradation of hydrocarbons in nature has become deeply ingrained in Canadians for more than 40 years, having endeavored natural beauty (Fig. 5o-p).