A three-year investigation reveals almost 40 percent of China's territory, or 3,569,200 square kilometers of land, suffers from soil erosion.

It's not only happening in rural areas, but also in cities and near factories and mines, said China's water erosion and bio-environment security scientific research team on Thursday.

In this picture published on November 7, 2008 is a soil erosion monitoring station built in northeast China's Liaoning Province. [Photo: www.news.lnd.com.cn]

This is the country's largest soil conservation scientific survey since 1949, when the People's Republic of China was established.

It showed 1.61 million square km of land is suffering from erosion by water and 1.96 million square km is being eroded by wind.

Erosion could be found in almost every river basin in every Province, said

The problem is severe as 4.52 billion tons of soil is eroded every year.

"China has a more dire situation than India, Japan, the United States, Australia and many other countries suffering from soil erosion," said the team.

If soil erosion continues at this rate, grain production on the 14 million mu of farm land in northeastern China, one of the country's most productive areas, will be reduced by 40 percent in 50 years, experts warned.

Erosion has already caused at least 200 billion yuan (US$29.4 billion) in economic losses to China since 2000, the team calculated.

(Xinhua News Agency November 21, 2008)