China will start backing up its shrinking glaciers with 59 meltwater reservoirs this year as the cost of climate change hits home in the world's most populous nation. The far west region of Xinjiang, home to many of the planet's highest peaks and widest ice fields, will carry out the 10-year engineering project, which aims to catch and store glacier run-off that might otherwise trickle away into the desert. Behind the measure is a concern that city residents in the region will run out of water supplies once the glaciers in the Tian, Kunlun and Altai mountains disappear. Anxiety has risen along with alpine temperatures, which are rapidly diminishing the ice fields. The 3,800-metre-high Urumqi No.l Glacier, the first to be measured in China, has lost more than 20 per cent of its volume since 1962, according to the Cold and Arid Regions Environmental and Engineering Research Institute. Others in the Tian (Heaven) range have lost similar amounts of ice. To deal with the consequences, Xinjiang will set aside 200 million Yuan ($28 million) for each of the next three years. In this first phase 29, reservoirs will be built, mostly in the southern Tian, with a combined capacity of 21.8 billion cubic metres of water, according to the Xinhua news agency. Wang Shijiang, director of Xinjiang Water Resource Department, told the agency that the mountain reservoir system was designed to "intercept" meltwater, which has increased in volume over the past 20 years as a result of global warming. Xinjiang, and its capital Urumqi, is particularly dependant on a steady supply of meltwater from glaciers, which act as solid reservoirs that store precipitation in the winter and release it in the summer. The natural alpine water tanks have begun leaking more than usual in recent years as temperatures rise, prompting the search for an artificial alternative. In some areas they have broken altogether, causing mountain floods that destroy homes and crops. Few of Urumqi's two million residents are aware of the problem because, in recent years, water supplies have surged thanks to the extra meltwater and increased rainfall. The excess supply has been used to water golf courses and to make artificial snow for a ski-slope in the semi-desert of Urumqi. But scientists say the glut is unsustainable because it comes from the release of water that has built up over thousands of years. "At the moment there is plenty of water in the big cities, but it is hard to say how long it will last," said He Yuanqing, a glaciologist at the Lanzhou Cold and Arid Regions Research Institute. "On the one hand, global warming is accelerating the melt. But on the other, it is increasing rainfall, so we need away to store the extra water." It is unclear, however, how long the water will last without replenishment. Experts have previously called for the reservoirs to be built underground so that the water does not evaporate in the summer, when Xinjiang has the highest average temperatures in China. Over-exploitation of river systems and oases have exacerbated the problem. The volume of water in the once vast Aibi Lake in Xinjiang has deceased by two-thirds over the past 50 years, the Beijing News reported on March 2. In terms of glacier melt, the worst affected area in China is the Tibetan plateau, often described as "the roof of the world". In February, Chinese scientists warned that glaciers on the plateau had lost 989 million cubic metres in the past 40 years and continued to melt at a "worrying speed". They noted that ice fields had shrunk by 196 square kilometres.