Sandstorms in China affect hundreds of millions of people annually. Just last year, in March, a sweeping fog of soil and grit enveloped 21 provinces within a span of three days. And in the months of April and May this year, multiple incidences left the north of the country blanketed in dreaded clouds of yellow.

While sandstorms are problematic for people, they are also problematic environmentally. Caused by deforestation and farming practices, the storms are a product of desertification and a culprit behind China's progressive loss of arable land. Much has been done to combat the drift, particularly in terms of afforestry, with State Forestry Administration (SFA) figures showing that 2.68 million square km of woodland was created between 2000 and 2009. The country's 12th Five-Year Plan (2011-15), published in March, outlines goals of planting 12.5 million hectares of new forest.

Sandstorms tend to originate in north and northwestern parts of the country – where the landscape is made up of desert or grassland, and animal farming is a widespread activity. Trees often make up less than 1 percent of vegetation in these areas, as is the case in the Xilingol grasslands of Inner Mongolia, where they account for 0.87 percent of the area's naturally-occurring flora, according to data from 2007. The move to address the loss of grass from grazing practices – and the sandstorms that occur as a result – by planting trees has left some scientists in doubt.

The strategy overlooks the usefulness of grass and shrubs in combating sandstorms. While trees have been the go-to solution since the early 1990s, very little change in soil erosion has been documented. SFA figures instead show that 1 million square meters of new land every year is lost to dust. Alternatively, scrub is outfitted with powers of prevention, and is ecologically smart.

Grass is dense, and naturally keeps soil bolted down. Moreover, it doesn't require planting or constant cultivation. As long as it is protected, it continues to grow. And unlike trees, it doesn't suck up groundwater. It survives on rainwater and is able to lock that moisture in the soil – another way to counteract sandstorms from rising.

Promoting scrub as the solution to China's sandstorm conundrum means promoting environmental protection – preserving grass from over consumption by livestock and from farmers who may need to clear it for cropland – actions that may compromise those most affected economically by sandstorms and increasing desertification. New monitoring technologies, like geographic information systems that look at grazing patterns and satellites that track pasture conditions may be beneficial in helping farmers to operate more sustainably. Time will tell if favoring grass patterns over afforestry efforts has any impact on the sands sweeping across China.

Tech Bytes

➲ Food fresh from the farm may soon be replaced by food fresh from outer space. Since 1987, China has been loading up recoverable satellites with the seeds of cash crops, hoping that the seeds would mutate well in high radiation and low gravity conditions. Now, the China Aerospace Science and Technology Corp. in cooperation with the country's Aerospace Breeding Research Center, have opened a base in Shaanxi Province to observe if and how these seeds may flourish in sandy soil. The project is anticipated to boost agriculture in the province.

➲ A study coming out of New Zealand shows that the world's current 6,000 spoken languages may have originated from one single dialect in Africa used 50,000 to 70,000 years ago. The research looked at the number of phonemes in 504 separate languages. Phonemes are distinct units of sound like vowels, consonants and tones, and they number higher in African languages more so than in any other. Considered a "founder effect," this shows that language reduces in complexity in the same way that genetics reduce in complexity the farther humans migrated away from the African continent.

➲ China's oldest panda died in May at the age of 34. Ming Ming, a female panda, passed away at Xiangjiang Wild Animal World located in Guangdong Province. She had lived there since 1998. The cause of death was determined by veterinarians on staff to be kidney failure, a result of old age and deteriorated organs. Pandas live on average to 22 years of age in captivity. Their life span in the wild is even shorter, just 15 years.