Silk Road threatened by melting glaciers

The Chinese gateway to the ancient Silk Road is being flooded

Once the eastern gateway to the Silk road, the Hexi corridor is sandwiched between the Qilian mountains to the southwest, and lower mountains bordering the Gobi desert to the northeast.

“This is an extremely arid area, with an average annual precipitation of about 125 millimetres,” says Chi-Yuen Wang, a geologist and hydrologist at the University of California at Berkeley.

Water scarcity has been less of a problem in recent years. Although irrigation pulled the region’s water table down during the 20th century, it unexpectedly began to rise again in 2003, and floods have been frequent since 2005.

New Scientist