DgcityFrom a control room in Ordos, in northern China’s Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region, river warden Fu Laichen commands a fleet of patrol drones watching over Yellow River tributaries that wind through the rugged terrain of the Kubuqi Desert. The ten waterways drain a combined watershed of 10,800 square kilometres and have long been a major source of the sediment that gives the Yellow River both its name and its heavy burden of silt.
Drones flying about 100 kilometres away stream live aerial footage of river flows back to the control room. The system records unauthorised activities such as illegal sand mining and spots blockages that could worsen flooding during the rainy season. In steep valleys and across wide sandfields where foot patrols once struggled to reach, the aircraft are faster and far safer. “A full day of hiking may not cover a whole river valley,” Fu said. Drones cover the ground quickly, pinpoint suspected locations and send photos and video back in real time.
Since 2023, Ordos has built 13 outdoor drone hangars and a smart platform linking the aircraft into an automated patrol network. Operators can pre-set flight routes or adjust them on the spot for targeted inspections, launching whenever the weather allows and watching for signal failures mid-flight. Fu, who has worked in the control centre for more than two years, says staff can now run remote operations and monitor rivers without trekking into remote terrain.
Drones are only one layer of the system. More than 500 camera sites now cover the tributaries, feeding footage to artificial-intelligence algorithms that analyse images around the clock. The software automatically flags encroachment on riverbanks and dispatches tasks to field teams, while rain radar supplies rainfall forecasts three hours ahead to strengthen flood preparedness across the watershed.
The tighter, technology-driven oversight sits alongside decades of broader ecological work in the region. Average annual sediment carried into the Yellow River from the Ordos tributaries has fallen sharply, from 27 million tonnes to 4 million tonnes, reducing the silt that downstream channels, reservoirs and flood defences must contend with.
Known as China’s Mother River, the Yellow River has been the focus of sustained conservation, reforestation and soil-erosion campaigns. Local officials say the automated network lets small teams monitor vast, hard-to-reach stretches continuously, extending protection over both the water itself and the arid, erosion-prone landscape that surrounds it.