Xianghai is a wetland landscape of interspersed habitats. The National Forestry and Grassland Administration places the reserve in northwestern Tongyu County and describes sand-dune elm groves, grassland, reed marshes and lake waters as interwoven. Together, they form a diverse wetland landscape.
From the journal
Sand, Reed and Elm: The Living Mosaic of Xianghai
Explore Xianghai’s dunes and elm groves, grassland, reed marshes and lakes, alongside an attributed 2026 report on wetland connectivity and a 2025 author preprint on modeled waterfowl habitat.
In the same city · Baicheng ↗The reserve joins marsh, grassland and dune
Replenishing the wetland
In August 2026, the Jilin provincial government reported that water connectivity and regulated replenishment had revived nearly 40,000 hectares of wetland in the reserve.
Waterbird habitat changed across a decade
A 2025 author preprint assesses Xianghai waterfowl habitat from 2014 to 2023. It describes a modeled index combining hydrological connectivity, vegetation, water depth and waterfowl diversity. The authors report that index values declined through 2019 and improved after 2020, with higher values around wetland cores and lakes. This is an author preprint’s modeled pattern, not a count of one species at every location.
Mongolian elm at the dune edge
An official forestry overview describes Xianghai’s sand dunes and elm groves alongside grassland, reed marshes and lakes.