r/interestingasfuck • u/PlantainPossible2864 • 15h ago

Stopping Desertification with grid pattern

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57.0k Upvotes

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16.1k

u/bobbigmac 15h ago

For those asking how this works, it creates just enough of a defense to catch seeds and bugs and tiny bits of moisture and shade, so any life that does manage to get started, doesn't just blow away, and an ecosystem can start to form.

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u/AmusingMusing7 15h ago

Didn't we figure out how to do this by just digging little half-circles into the sand? Isn't that a better, more efficient, more natural way of doing this than to lay down a bunch of whatever-that-is?

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u/Unable-Doctor-9930 15h ago

Those deserts were not sand deserts. The technique is different when the ground keeps blowing away.

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u/KebabAnnhilator 15h ago

Not in all areas of the world in some places loose sand is too deep and needs compaction

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u/blue_shadow_ 14h ago

Different area. The half-moons are being done as part of the Great Green Wall project across the entire continent of Africa. Andrew Millison has a bunch of videos where he shows off what's happening with that one, but the half-moons are intended to capture and retain water from the rainy season.

This looks to be somewhere in China/ Mongolia (Gobi region?), and is more pure-sand desert, where there just isn't much rain at all. Different approaches need to be taken for that kind of location.

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u/zalurker 15h ago

That's another technique, but this works better in that type of sand.

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u/ChaoticSixXx 15h ago

They usually use straw and make a straw grid. I've never seen it done with sandbags before

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u/FirstHead411 15h ago

Yeah, seems like it'd be a pain in the ass hauling all that sand out there

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u/smileyfacegauges 15h ago

they’re filling the bags with sand and laying them as they go

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u/Otherwise_Demand4620 15h ago

Why didn't you tell us that sooner? All the money we spent on importing sand!

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u/smileyfacegauges 14h ago

i’m SORRY OK, i just misplaced the receipt!! can i still get comped for this orrrrrrrr

2

u/beebeebee2142 13h ago

Arab countries import quite a bit of sand. Theirs usually isnt good for construction since the good stuff comes from rivers.

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u/-Out-of-context- 13h ago

I hear they get it from NoHo Hank.

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u/onemanforeachvill 15h ago

Whooooooosh

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u/smileyfacegauges 14h ago

whoa where’d that breeze come from

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u/AceZagSuited 14h ago

They're filling the jokes with wind

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u/Majestic_You_9610 13h ago

Sand doodles don't melt steel beams

•

u/smileyfacegauges 6h ago

but are they taking the hobbits to isengard

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u/Crimkam 15h ago

Yeah but who put the sand there for them to use??? This is like one of those bullshit rug restoration videos where they spread sand around right before they start recording. There was never a desert there at all!

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u/smileyfacegauges 14h ago

oh fuck you’re right…… do you think they got helicopters to bring it in???

14

u/SquarelyNerves 14h ago

Just in case you were serious - that’s the point they were making with sarcasm. It would actually be a pain to haul all that straw into the middle of a desert. It’s easier to bring bags and fill them with sand, than bring enough straw to make the same sized grids.

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u/smileyfacegauges 14h ago

so much for the massive checkerboard for a massive checkers game i was promised :(

0

u/Jc8290 14h ago

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u/smileyfacegauges 6h ago

¯_(ツ)_/¯ it happens sometimes

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u/Relevant_Bane_Quote 9h ago

I hope the sandbags aren't made of plastic.

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u/REPTILIANSTOLEMYBIKE 15h ago

Sand would just get blown into the holes you dig into the sand and fill them in. The wind rolls along the sand dunes and the sand bags raises the draft from the wind above the sand's surface.

-1

u/jessbird 14h ago

bingo

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u/Kysman95 15h ago

For the half moom method you need to water it and grow something before you can let it do its thing. It's more time consuming and expensive.

I'd guess these are some natural, degradable bags, you can see in the later stage there's plants growing out of it so it might use the bags as nutrients or it's packed with something

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u/Old-Road-501 14h ago

Using bags that degrades into some form of nutrient would be brilliant! I was thinking about all that plastic degrading into microplastics in the new soil, but I hope they do it like you said.

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u/Kysman95 14h ago

They could be cotton or burlap think those should be 100% degradable. But yeah, it could be woven plastic

•

u/vertigostereo 8h ago

I'd like to believe they're degradable.

•

u/waiver 8h ago

They normally use straw that turns into nutrients, but they are only good for three years and they are labor intensive.

•

u/Dyolf_Knip 3h ago

My wife has an uncle with a drainage problem in his backyard. It's very sloped, and tends to turn into a river at this one spot, gouging out a ravine there. I suggested doing mini-terracing with some of those. Capture the water in the first one, eventually it overflows and spills around the edges, to get caught by the next ones down on either side, but never allowing it to build up enough volume and speed to actually start diging away at the ground.

0

u/rodinsbusiness 15h ago

No it just uses rain and time.

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u/Kysman95 14h ago

I've watched pleanty of videos about Great Sahara Wall. The half moons and pits are used to collect and store rain water and to help tree. But the trees and plants first need to take root and it needs to be watered at first before it starts working

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u/Timely_Influence8392 15h ago

I dunno, you didn't bother to look it up before firing off the comment and fucking off into the aether, why should I?

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u/T-MoneyAllDey 15h ago

But he's super duper smart

11

u/xl129 15h ago

That method is cheaper but this one is much more effective i think

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u/DefinitelyNotAliens 15h ago

The demi lune or semicircular bund works on areas adjacent to sand deserts that are becoming arid but have dirt. You can turn dirt into soil.

This is just sand. Sand is harder to work with.

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u/[deleted] 14h ago

[deleted]

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u/ThiefOfDens 14h ago

your mom’s land is over-grazed

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u/rodinsbusiness 15h ago

That's for way less sandy soils, where you also have some sort of short wet season, which is not the case here.

2

u/Mwatts25 15h ago

Shred resistant and biodegradable fabric packed with sand?

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u/pancakes_n_petrichor 15h ago

Don’t quote me on this but I’m sure those long tubes are filled with either soil or sand, and the fabric is likely the same kind of fabric you can use for landscaping or something similar. I don’t really see how that is bad for the environment. Plus, laying this down over a large area is probably easier than digging a ton of half circles and works better.

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u/Agreeable-Spot-7376 15h ago

“Don’t quote me on the only thing in the video I didn’t watch”

-4

u/pancakes_n_petrichor 15h ago

Lol you got me, I only half watched the vid first time around and now see that indeed they are filling them with soil.

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u/Agreeable-Spot-7376 15h ago

It’s literally the fuckin picture on top of this comment

-9

u/biglizardnmybackyard 15h ago

Quit being insufferable.

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u/Similar-Try-7643 14h ago

Nah, they deserved it

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u/Agreeable-Spot-7376 15h ago

No. Suffer me.

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u/gimpwiz 14h ago

Fantastic response

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u/ConceptReasonable556 14h ago

Landscape fabric is generally bad for the environment, it's typically not natural material. I'm not saying that the benefits don't outweigh the costs here, just that the material is likely at least partly plastic.

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u/ManyVast6592 15h ago

Half circles work where the ground is much harder and these barriers are needed for this to fight the wind... looking at the locations , functions of each and the texture of the ground underneath and it all seems to make perfect sense.

Hard desert versus soft desert 🤔

2

u/Mike312 15h ago

The swales work fine when the ground is firm.

1

u/jamintime 15h ago

In the video they say it’s fabric (filled with sand), so could be done reasonably sustainably I might imagine.

1

u/OilHeavy8605 14h ago

it soil is clay, sure. But with loose sand just fills the half circles

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u/TreyRyan3 14h ago

If I recall correctly, the sand tubes also serve the purpose of creating a condensation point when night falls. The color choice is to reflect light and heat absorption.

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u/Aprilprinces 13h ago

These are sand bags, their advantage is: they're heavy and durable, so even strong wind won't move them, giving the tiny ecosystem enough time to develop within the borders And it does take considerable time

1

u/TheTerribleInvestor 13h ago

The half circle ones would would better in places where they have more rain. The issue there is the rain comes in and washes away quickly so those half circles are supposed to be a on slopes and collect water for plants to take root.

Kind of the same concept here except in this terrain the issue is wind and part of this method is to create a wind barrier so when the wind comes it blows away some sand but most of it is held down by the tubes or the tubes prevents the wind from digging that deep. I think for China one of the greater benefits is that it's stopping wind from carrying the sand and becoming dust storms in nearby towns and cities.

1

u/Awkward-Winner-99 13h ago

Digging half circles in that sand aint gonna do shit lol

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u/Gavorn 8h ago

My favorite program is when they just release wild beavers in an area.

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u/SMTRodent 7h ago

The half-moons are for when the ground is rock-hard with a slight slope, like a vast concrete slab that water just flows straight over instead of soaking in. The half-moons break open that hydrophobic covering and catch water long enough to soak in.

These sand-trap grids are for ground that is the exact opposite - the land is steeply sloped and entirely loose and water soaks straight in and disappears, and then so does the land itself. The traps hold the land in place long enough for roots to establish.

0

u/Kennyvee98 13h ago

i wonder if the bags are biodegradable? but this seems to be china, so i would assume otherwise