BEIJING - Forestry experts warned degraded grasslands are likely to speed up the processes of soil erosion and desertification, feeding the sandstorms that usually sweep North China in the spring.

"Overgrazing causes about 90 percent of grassland erosion, extending from the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau to the arid reaches of the Inner Mongolia autonomous region," Zhang Xinshi, professor of the Institute of Botany at the Chinese Academy of Sciences, said on Friday at the Sino-German expert consultation on climate change and combating desertification project in Beijing.

Restoring grasslands and controlling desertification have become an important part of China's fight against climate change, said Liu Tuo, director-general of the State Forestry Administration's national bureau to combat desertification.