Taklamakan Water Finds Test China’s Desert Farming Push

Geologists have identified two large water sources beneath the Taklamakan Desert, opening a new test of whether brackish and underground supplies can support China’s sand-control and desert agriculture projects.

The South China Morning Post report places the discovery in Xinjiang, where the Taklamakan’s shifting dunes, limited rainfall and heavy evaporation have long made water supply a constraint for farming and anti-desertification work.

The findings came from a water-finding project conducted by the regional geological bureau and covered by CCTV Finance on Monday.

One source sits near the desert’s southern edge in Andir township in Minfeng county.

The other lies south of the Mazartag Mountains, deeper inside the desert.

Together, the finds challenge the view that the area’s underground water is limited to stagnant or salt-heavy reserves unsuitable for drinking or food production.

Researchers also built a test station along the desert’s edge to use brackish water for irrigation and desertification control.

Brackish water contains more salt than fresh water but less than seawater, and the project treats it as a practical resource rather than a waste stream.

Fresh water accounts for only a small share of the planet’s water supply, while non-conventional sources are gaining attention for crop irrigation and other water-intensive uses, including cooling artificial intelligence data centres.

The United Nations Food and Agriculture Organisation has warned that brackish and other non-conventional water resources require local knowledge of climate, soil and crops before they can meet irrigation needs at scale.

Crop tests in China and elsewhere have focused on salt-tolerant varieties, though some uses may still require desalination.

The setting makes the discovery commercially and technically significant.

The Taklamakan covers 337,600 sq km, roughly the size of Germany, and has been called the “sea of death” because of its harsh climate and moving dunes.

A 2015 study from the Chinese Academy of Sciences’ Xinjiang ecology and geography institute pointed to a far larger subsurface reserve, estimating that the broader Tarim Basin could hold more water underground than the five North American Great Lakes combined.

Climate pressure is changing the water equation around the desert.

The Taklamakan has historically received little annual precipitation, but warming has brought more intense rainfall and flooding that can threaten infrastructure.

That creates a difficult operating balance: the same region needs water for agriculture and sand control, while extreme rain can damage the systems those projects are meant to protect.

China has already turned the desert perimeter into a major engineering zone under the Great Green Wall initiative.

In 2024, authorities finished a 3,050km perimeter barrier around the Taklamakan, combining vegetation with solar-panel structures that block sand to reduce storms and protect infrastructure.

Crop projects, including a desert wheat farm in Kunyu near the southern edge, are intended to add food-security benefits to the barrier work.

Water remains the limiting factor.

Pivot and drip irrigation have helped support farming and sand-control work in arid Chinese regions, but the new sources matter only if researchers can turn them into usable supply without worsening soil salinity or adding costly treatment requirements.