In Guiyang, Mother Nature meets high-tech

"With the digital map and GPS in the app, we can easily find roads and avoid dangerous places in the forests. Before that, we needed to rely on a compass and paper map," Li said.

In July, Li completed a forest survey that had lasted for a year and a half. He needed to investigate and record information before uploading to the app - data involving tree stocks and varieties, as well as fire hazard levels.

With the help of the platform, Li doesn't need to bring a lot of graphs along as he used to do 10 years ago to check changes in the forest such as soil conditions and plant varieties.

"What we need to do now is to click and choose the related items on the tablet, and find the remote sensing images and compare the changes," he said.

Mission: Ecology

Guizhou is among 11 provinces and cities that are included in the Yangtze River Economic Belt, a key national development strategy. It has made ecological protection its most important mission.

Guiyang was recognized as the first State-level forest city by the State Forestry Bureau in 2004.

It is surrounded by a forest belt of 162,000 hectares, and has a coverage rate of 49 percent.

According to Zhao Deming, secretary of the Guiyang Committee of the Communist Party of China, the city will increase its forest coverage rate to 60 percent by 2020.

Investment needed

However, the huge area of forest also requires more investment in management, and the new digital management system, which is being upgraded, will effectively meet the needs, according to Wang Jianfeng, an official from the city's eco-civilization construction commission.

"The latest project of the Guiyang ecological cloud platform, - which has integrated forest information and management - will help the city realize its goal of ecological civilization."

The system is only one part of the city's ecological cloud platform. It also includes collection and sharing of information about water, air, pollutants and other things to allow quick decision-making, Wang said.

Zhao Yandi and Li Hanyi contributed to this story.