Science news this week: China turns a desert into a carbon sink, a Viking Age grave holds a giant who had brain surgery, real-life inception, and a last-minute Valentine’s gift idea from nature

This week’s science news was filled with astonishing stories about ecological transformations. Topping the list was the finding that China has planted so many trees around the Taklamakan Desert that it has turned one of the world’s largest and driest places into a carbon sink that sucks up more carbon dioxide than it emits.

The effort is part of China’s “Great Green Wall” aimed at holding back the expansion of the Gobi Desert. So far, China has planted roughly 88 million acres (36 million hectares) of forest and 66 billion trees, showing that human-led interventions can transform natural landscapes for the better. That was also evident in China’s ban of fishing in the Yangtze River, which has caused fish populations to rebound.