Areas of desertification and sandification - land on which soil has been lost - have continued to decline, the State Forestry Administration said on Tuesday.

Its latest survey showed that by the end of 2014, the desertified land area had dropped by 12,120 square kilometers to 2.6 million square kilometers. At the same time, sandified land area fell by 9,902 square kilometers to 1.7 million square kilometers.

Zhang Jianlong, director of the State Forestry Administration, said the results "are much more encouraging" when compared with 2009.