The statues and frescoes of Buddhist deities at Mogao Grottoes are being digitized to preserve their images for future generations.

The Buddhist deities represented in the frescoes and statues at Mogao Grottoes will no doubt be pleased to learn that Dunhuang Academy is making significant progress toward digitizing their pictures and statues, thereby ensuring their future and allowing more people to view them.

The caves were discovered in the early 1990s by Europeans, though they were first dug in AD 366 and have been a place of Buddhist worship since then. They are the principal attraction of Dunhuang, a small city on the Silk Road in West China's Gansu province.

A high resolution digital photo of a niche with statues in Mogao Grottoes' No 45 cave, taken by the Apsara camera. [Photos by Sun Zhijun / For China Daily]

Inevitably, however, the frescoes are fading away due to the passage of time, environmental degradation and human activity.

Every day in late summer, thousands of tourists from all over the world come to the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) World Heritage Site to admire the inspired art works.

Since most of the caves were initially designed for domestic use, they are generally smaller than 25 square meters. Carbon dioxide exhaled by the legions of visitors is disturbing the temperature and moisture balance of the caves, which is causing discoloration and damaging the frescoes and statues made of earth, wood, straw and mineral pigments.

Other factors causing the art works to be damaged include the sandy environment, wind, floods, rain and occasional earthquakes.

"We hope the grottoes will last forever, but they are changing every minute," says Fan Jinshi, curator of Dunhuang Academy, which was established in the early 1940s,

"If we create digital images of these works and store them appropriately the hope is they could last forever."

Fan came up with the idea in the late 1980s, and since then the academy has been working with various museums and universities, and other organizations, both at home and abroad, to realize the project.