China's national vegetation quality reached its second-highest level since satellite monitoring began in 2000, according to a national ecological meteorology report for the year of 2025 released Thursday by the China Meteorological Administration.

The report, now in its 10th year, found that favorable temperature and rainfall patterns across the country in 2025 – second only to the exceptional conditions of 2024 – drove broad ecological improvements in forests, grasslands, farmlands and desert regions.

Key findings

China's vegetation ecological quality index hit 69.1 in 2025, 6.6% above the long-term average. Roughly two-thirds of the country's land area was rated as having "good" or "very good" ecological vegetation quality. Forest zones in particular set a new record, with their index rising 0.9% above the previous 2024 high.

Across the country, 99% of regions saw rising temperatures and 62% received increased rainfall between 2000 and 2025, with the latter concentrated in central and eastern regions. These climatic shifts, combined with China's large-scale ecological restoration programs, underpinned the gains.

Dust storms declining

One of the most striking changes appeared along China's northern sand barrier, a vast strip of forest stretching across the country's north designed to block desertification.

About 93.4% of the belt saw increased vegetation cover since 2000, with 28.3% of areas growing by more than 0.25 percentage points annually. Meanwhile, the proportion of land highly susceptible to sandstorms fell from 69.5% in 2000 to 48.8% in 2025, a drop of 20.7 percentage points.

Most areas in the belt now experience one to fewer dust-storm days per decade compared with the 2000 baseline.

Yellow River becomes greener

Vegetation cover along the Yellow River also improved markedly, with some areas seeing annual vegetation increases exceeding 0.75 percentage points.

In the river's "bend region" – the critically eroded middle section – vegetation cover reached 41.5%, the highest since 2000.