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HOHHOT, June 17-- As a drone buzzed overhead taking aerial photos of the prairies in north China's Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region, Zhang Wenbiao took soil samples on the ground. Work in the area has been going on since May. It involves an intensive "physical check" on an 18,333-hectare area of Xilingol Grasslands, one of the four major pastoral regions in Inner Mongolia, before starting a comprehensive grassland restoration program. The project, the first of its kind to treat grassland degradation in the region, uses a big data platform jointly established by the government of East Ujimqin Banner and M·Grass Ecology, a tech firm in Inner Mongolia, to restore the grassland's ecosystem. The samples brought by Zhang and his colleagues to the company's lab for analysis showed poor soil nutrition. Based on the data about soil, water and geological conditions obtained from satellite photographs and precision photos taken by drones, the big data platform has selected different grass species adapted to growing on different areas of the prairies from the system's database containing information of 62,000 varieties of plant germplasm resources. "Understanding nature's language is the first step in the restoration process. For us, nature talks in data," said Chen Yufeng, deputy general manager of the M·Grass grassland restoration project. Seeding machines have been installed to carry out mass sowing in the grasslands with seeds selected by the company. Chen said that they are using the rainy season from May to July for the planting, which is conducive to the survival of the vegetation. | 
