The Taklamakan Desert has shrunk over the last two decades

The Taklamakan Desert is the second largest mobile desert in the world, and its dynamic sand flow exacerbates soil erosion, degradation, and desertification in the surrounding areas. In order to prevent desertification from spreading outward, China has invested a large amount of resources in desertification prevention and ecological restoration. Previous studies have revealed greening trends through satellite vegetation indices, indicating that desertification may be reversed. However, the spatiotemporal distribution characteristics of sandy land that can directly reflect the struggle between humans and sand extracted from long-term remote sensing images are not clear enough. Therefore, this study used time-series Landsat images from 2003 to 2022 to analyze the spatiotemporal dynamics of the Taklamakan Desert Oasis Transition Zone (TD-OTZ) sandy land on the front line of human sand struggle in the past two decades. Here, we share all the intermediate data obtained from the study, including classification maps of sandy and other land types in the study area, land use change rates and conversion data, desert boundaries, image availability, and greening trends. These data are consistent with the research used in the paper.