Walking across the sand dunes, Lu Qi steps on sand divided into square blocks by straw.
This is the straw checkerboard technique, hailed as the “Chinese Rubik’s Cube,” widely used in China to increase surface roughness and thereby reduce wind erosion.
The site is the Ulan Buh Desert in North China’s Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region, where Lu and his team conducted experimental work. Here, this technique, combined with various supportive measures, has allowed saplings and trees to regenerate the land.