World's Highest Cold 'Katpana Desert' To Become Green Forest Under TBTTP

ISLAMABAD, (UrduPoint / Pakistan Point News - 30th May, 2021 ) :The adverse impacts of environmental degradation are badly affecting one of the largest glaciers of the World in Gilgit Baltistan to melt at an unprecedented pace where in order to mitigate glacial melting and habitat loss the government has initiated massive plantation in the highest cold desert Katpana to convert into a green forest helping reduce increasing temperature in the Northern Areas.

In order to meet this goal, the world's highest and cold desert 'Katpana Desert' located in Pakistan's scenic Skardu region is going to go green as 280,000 saplings have been planted in the Ten billion Tree Tsunami (TBTTP) campaign under Prime Minister Imran Khan's vision of Clean Green Pakistan.

The aim behind planting trees in a desert is to turn barren lands from grey to green and contain the rising temperatures and environmental degradation in the region, informed APP an official of the 10 Billion Tree Tsunami Plantation project.

Highlighting the first-ever desert plantation of the country ahead of World Environment Day celebrations which the country would be hosting globally as a leader on environmental conservation, he added that Under TBTTP, the respective Forest Department has aimed at continuing the process to harness maximum areas under forest cover by converting desert to green cover," he said.

"Now turning a desert into green forest, around 35,000 plants have been planted alone in Spring Plantation 2021 at Hoto Forest, Skardu comprising a mix of Indian Willow and Olive plants," the official pointed out.

While elaborating on the cold desert environment, the official described Katpana cold desert as the world's highest desert in Skardu, Gilgit-Baltistan.

He added that giving a breathtaking view of picturesque dunes of fine quality sand, the high sand dunes of Katpana has given it the name of the cold desert.

"Due to a higher altitude terrain, the temperature prevailing is savage varying from 8�C to 26�C in October which drops to -10�C in December to January making the region one of the harshest areas to survive in during peak seasons of cold," he said.

Under TBTTP, he explained during this spring season 2021, 0.035 million plants were planted where a total of 0.28 million saplings were planted in Katpana cold desert since the inception of the TBTTP project.

The plantation in Katpana has been named Hoto Plantation under which deep planting technique was used with spacing of 10x10 alongwith long shoot cuttings activity being carried out to raise trees in the cold desert.

To a question, he said the irrigation and water source for watering saplings for the first two years would be managed physically through hand-watering. However, after deep growth of the roots, the plants would suck from ground-water, he added.

Responding another query, the TBTTP official informed that native species like Salix tetrasperma (Indian Willow) were planted with a total population of 90 percent followed by 10 percent of Eleagnushotensis (Russian olive) in this plantation.

/778