The Dust Storm: Historical evolution of Inner Mongolia and the impacts of the climate change

Dust storm, a kind of meteorological disasters, occurs in all ages in Inner Mongolia. The central- west area of Inner Mongolia is one of dust storm source area in China. This study includes the historical evolution of dust storm in Inner Mongolia, dust storm influence and its temporal and spatial distribution, the surface ecological environment variations over the main source areas and the impacts of the climate change and human activities on the surface and dust storms. When dust storm happens, a great deal of surface sand-dust is blown up into high sky by gales, makes the air being dim and the horizontal visibility below 1000m. In recent years, especially in the springs of 2000, 2001 and 2002, dust storm attacked the Northwest of China more frequently than other years of the 1990's. The phenomenon has attracted much attention from many directions. Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region is located in the north part of China with areas of 1.183 million sq. km in total. The central-west region of I.M. (CW-I.M.), 36-46N, 96-118E, belongs to arid and semiarid areas of Central-East Asia. Less than 300 mm annual precipitation on average and most of them fall in summer-autumn seasons, which accounting for 90.4% of the yearly rainfall (1). There are 6 deserts or sandy-lands from west to east in CW-I.M, where, less vegetables growing and own abundance sand and dust materials. Therefore, it is one of the main dust storm source regions in China. Dust storm occurs not only in the modern time, but also in the ancient time. The earliest dust storm was recorded in a book named_Nature History_(in Chinese) written by Zhang Hua during the 16th century BC. He did some descriptions about gusty wind and dust storm phenomenon. According to the result of Huang Zhaohua's statistics from some Chinese historical materials, there were totally 53 records described dust storms from the 3rd to 19th