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Qinghai

Qinghai · Map

At Ta’er Monastery, butter becomes a temporary sculpture. In the Hehuang valleys, painted clay, embroidery and temple murals hold other kinds of time. Northward, Qinghai Lake is crossed by fish and birds; westward, salt works and telescopes bring two different kinds of work to the Qaidam Basin. Farther south, painters, carvers, herders and river patrols bring the headwaters into view through particular places and tasks. Follow the material, the water or the work: each route opens another Qinghai.

Qinghai
Xining Haidong Haibei Huangnan Hainan Tibetan Autonomous Prefecture Golog Yushu Haixi

Selected waterways · simplified geography

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From the journal

Zeku Grassland: Pasture, Monitoring and Seasonal Care

A 2023 forestry report describes Zeku’s grassland monitoring and the role of ecological rangers, pastoral households and local field stations in resource management.

2 min readHuangnan
Original editorial schematic of Zeku’s 2022 monitoring account: grassland, field plots and observation records. It does not depict a particular station or household.
Original editorial schematic of Zeku’s 2022 monitoring account: grassland, field plots and observation records. It does not depict a particular station or household.

A grassland watched at several scales

Zeku’s name is linked to the Zeku River valley, and the river is a tributary of the upper Yellow River. A 2023 forestry report describes grassland management as a network extending from county and township offices to villages, communities, ecological rangers and pastoral households. Monitoring stations and protection posts formed part of that system in the report’s 2022 account.

The scale matters. A grassland is not simply an open horizon; it is also a place where changes in vegetation, pests, wetlands and grazing pressure are tracked. In 2022, the county reported surveys of grassland plots and soil samples as part of its monitoring work. These observations turn the landscape into a record assembled from field sites, samples and local knowledge.

Seasonal land and long-term repair

The same report lists work on degraded grassland, wetlands, pest control and vegetation recovery. Each is a different kind of care: restoring damaged pasture, watching for changes in plant cover, and managing areas under seasonal grazing restrictions. Its figures describe projects completed or monitored in 2022, rather than the daily routine of every herding family.

The 2022 survey work links grassland conditions to monitoring stations, field plots and soil samples. Pasture appears here both as a working landscape and as an ecosystem monitored across county, village and household scales.

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  1. Original editorial schematic of Zeku’s 2022 monitoring account: grassland, field plots and observation records. It does not depict a particular station or household.© 2026 IFreeing · Rights information Photo source ↗ Proportionally resized and converted to WebP without cropping. No objects were added, removed or reconstructed.