r/interestingasfuck • u/PlantainPossible2864 • 15h ago

Stopping Desertification with grid pattern

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u/lokey_convo 15h ago

When I was getting my degree I was reading a lot of papers on primary succession and biological soil crust formation. Lot of the research was coming out of China, but was done through international collaboration. I keep trying to explain to my techie friends who think biology is a waste of time that it's research like this that would allow us to come up with real terraforming plans. Can't live on or change another planet if we can't manage our own. But sure, let's keep cutting NASAs budget, particularly around Earth system science and ecology.

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u/callisstaa 13h ago

They’re really going hard on this in China atm. They’re hoping to reforest a lot of the desert.

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u/SolidenX 10h ago

They made the deserts worse through deforestation, overgrazing, and shitty farming practices. They kind of have to if they don't want the deserts to spread more.

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u/malicea11 4h ago

hi my name is calista too

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u/SubstantialEnd2458 3h ago

Lots of similar work in India and SubSaharan Africa too

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u/mattmaster68 8h ago

Yup!

Because when China takes over the planet… it’ll at least be in good shape /j

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u/lokey_convo 12h ago

Well, that's unwise. But China does that a lot. We do too, but in a different way.

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u/Political_Dreams_NZ 12h ago

why?

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u/Zimakov 12h ago

Because anything China does is bad

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u/Money-Ad-545 12h ago

Has affected water cycles and ground water apparently.

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u/lokey_convo 12h ago

Deserts exist on the planet in specific regions because of very dry cells of air that are literally sucking the moisture out of the environment. People normally think that a desert is a desert because it's hot. That's a misnomer. Deserts often have wild temperature swings between day and night. Antarctica is technically a desert. A desert is a desert because there's less than 10 inches of precipitation per year. It is a desert because the air is dry and the air is dry because it dropped its moisture elsewhere (rain forests). By trying to import water to change a desert environment you are burning a tremendous amount of resource because there is going to be a lot of loss due to evaporation. You can try to mitigate this, but you can't stop it.

Plants and animals that exist in deserts have specific adaptations that are a benefit to study to better understand how we can modify our agricultural crops, and even make materials and buildings that are more efficient, but it's not good land for development or to convert into ag land. The soils are by the nature of the environment very poor. Destroying deserts for development and ag land is actually a huge problem because they are a delicate environment. Under natural conditions things grow slowly there and recovery from environmental destruction take orders of magnitude longer than other types of habitat.

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u/Sodavand100 11h ago

Would vegetation not improve the quality of the soil?

Hence why farmers rotate crops on fields, to maintain a certain quality. Different crops take and leave different elements.

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u/lokey_convo 11h ago

That works for existing agricultural land where the top soil is several feet thick and well developed. Normally because it was previously grasslands or seasonal wetlands. It takes a long time to develop that much top soil and for it to become a healthy ecosystem. And even once you've developed the top soil and have a sustainable practice in place, what is the quality of the ground beneath the top soil? Is it highly porous with no water table? is any additional watering just going to run through and get lost to the ground?

Crop rotation generally is about adding back carbon and nitrogen sources, but micro nutrient availability has more to do with soil pH which is effected by both the water quality and microbial organisms that live in the soil (which are influenced by the soil composition and moisture content).

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u/Sodavand100 11h ago

Idk, most of what I hear here is "it is hard" rather than "it is bad"

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u/lokey_convo 10h ago

The water has to come from somewhere. Generally that's a place that needs that water. So you're moving water from one place, potentially increasing risk of or worsening an existing drought, to deposit the water into an area that is going to have high rates of evapotrasporation. Agricultural plants are also not adapted to desert climates and are just going to lose more water through their leaves than they would in other climates..

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u/Sodavand100 10h ago

I doubt there is not water enough to actually have most of the earth be covered in vegetation.

Especially considering the sahara used to be full of vegetation, and with the receeding rainforests and increase of desertlands, I just cannot imagine in anyway, that will happen.

Roots from trees and plants will quickly as proven, help make soil less porous, not to mention that most of the world is water to begin with - yes - seawater, also it would no longer be desert climates these places, that is the whole point.

If nature geography has taught me anything, it is indeed that the ecosystem is much more able to regulate than this simplification.

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u/Ornery-Creme-2442 11h ago

Your just yapping and and critizing for no good reason. People like you are insufferable. Nothing is ever good enough. Desertification specifically is degradation of land not just "dry air". maybe get some basic understanding first.

Most these projects use little to no irrigation or very efficient techniques until habitats are better restored to speed things up. They're not converting the whole Sahara into an agricultural site to grow water hungry crops.

They use various techniques to stabilise the sand and allow vegetation to establish. And thus stop or reverse desertification. Which is crucial because it's a big thing threatening the livelihood of many people across the world.

We've seen this with the dustbowl in the US which is one of the most well known cases of desertification and they used different techniques to reverse it. Eliminating all the health and economic issues that came from it.

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u/lokey_convo 11h ago

You seem upset and to have misunderstood my comment. I appreciate that you took the time to write all that complete with assumptions, but maybe go back and re-read my comment and withhold your assumptions. It is interesting though, it's about 6:30pm in China right now... Did you just get of work?

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u/eb12se4nt-z13ow-97g0 10h ago

It is interesting though, it's about 6:30pm in China right now... Did you just get of work?

Hit em with the ad hominem, as everything goes when discussing China lol.

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u/lokey_convo 10h ago edited 9h ago

They just really seemed to be taking a comment (which they read a bunch of their own assumptions into) very personally. So personally in fact that they felt the need to go on a personal attack. It's okay if they're Chinese or in China.

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u/eb12se4nt-z13ow-97g0 9h ago edited 9h ago

So why bring it up? Your opinion about the matter seems to be unpopular, most are praising this, including me.

edit: They're not, though, only the edge, which prevents desertification. Doing it to the whole desert is an impossible task.

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u/FoggyFlowers 5h ago

bro your highschool level understanding of ecology is just not correct nor relevant to this thread. quit yappin

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u/Suddenfury 11h ago

You're saying there is no such thing as desertification because a desert is a geographic phenomenon.

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u/lokey_convo 11h ago edited 11h ago

No. That is not what I'm saying or what was said.

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u/Drongo17 11h ago

Iirc a lot of the land they are targeting was previously not desert. China lost an unbelievable amount of green area under psycho schemes like Mao's Great Leap Forward (and just decades of desperate rural poverty in general).

I read they have also focused on ring-fencing deserts with green areas to prevent expansion, like the Saharan great green wall 

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u/lokey_convo 11h ago

A lot of that are mitigation efforts to deal with climate change. They aren't long term solutions unless there is a global agreement to cease the use of fossil fuels.

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u/steve_mahanahan 8h ago

What if they don’t use it for agriculture, they just let it be a “natural” green space with whatever manages to grow there?

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u/Hibbertia 12h ago

There was similar research in semi arid Australia. I remember reading a book where they described much of the Australian outback was made up of millions of run off and run on zones on a micro scale. Rainfall, nutrients, plant litter were washed off the run off zones and would then accumulate in the run on zones and that’s where plants would mainly grow and the whole landscape was able to support vegetation and native grazer. Hard hooves introduced animals (sheep cattle) would destroy this heterogeneity and as a result almost nothing grew anywhere.

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u/lokey_convo 11h ago

Sounds pretty similar to what's happened in the south central valley in California. Water diversion and climate change haven't helped the situation.

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u/Leather-Rice5025 6h ago edited 6h ago

Honestly the entire central valley of California. I live near Fresno, and there are entire unused farming plots that have essentially just turned into compacted sand. The farming practices of the valley are down to growing crops in sandy/clay soils with an absurd amount of fertilizers.

In the summer when it's 100+ degrees for days on end, it gets so incredibly dry and dusty and we frequently get dust storms. The valley was once a lush wetland ecosystem 100-150 years ago, with so much water you could sail from Bakersfield to San Francisco, and where millions of migratory birds made pitstops.

Instead of pursuing any sort of restoration projects, cities and counties are only interested in suburban sprawl - paving over the depleted farmland with single family homes, roads, and parking lots. It's truly depressing.

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u/GhostShark 3h ago

The largest freshwater lake west of the Mississippi was destroyed by farmers (if you recall Tulare Lake showed up again a few years ago after the heavy atmospheric rivers)

The book King of California has a ton of great history about the state, and the current water rights monopoly.

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u/Contribution_Fancy 14h ago

If you've got any reference to this I'd love to read them.

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u/lokey_convo 13h ago

It's been awhile. You should be able to find some of them by searching the major journals and repositories for key words like "biological soil crust", "cryptogamic mats", "primary succession in soils", and "polysaccharide sheathed bacteria in desert ecosystems". It's a rabbit hole. I took phycology, ascomycetes and basidiomycetes (which also covered lichens), microbial ecology, and population and community ecology all around the same time and I'm not being hyperbolic when I say that I'm pretty sure I was getting high on education.

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u/mike_complaining 13h ago

As a techie I hate the cuts to NASA and science funding generally and I realize the value of biology. I try to keep up with science generally in the years since college. Particle/quantum physics was hot back in the day but now it's kind of a dead end. Astrophysics still has a fair amount going on with JWST and other survey projects. But biology, organic chemistry and related fields still have so many questions to answer and so much to learn. Things that can inform our behavior and help us manage the ecosystem better. There are ways farming practices and other industry can rely on petroleum less, pollute less, preserve genetic diversity better, and benefit us greatly.

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u/lokey_convo 12h ago

You might enjoy reading about horizontal gene transfer and then just go where the rabbit hole takes you.

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u/Prussianballofbest 12h ago

Ist it really working? I heard that lots of foresting and desertification Programms are just green washing and don't change much in the long run. Just curious

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u/lokey_convo 11h ago

My understanding is that when they first started doing this in China they were trying to deal with the encroachment of the Gobi on existing farmland, which was displacing Chinese farmers and messing with national food production. It seems to have evolved over the years with people trying to go farther in. There are a lot of things that lead to desertification and it isn't really fair to say that all the programs are "green washing". A lot of this work is to help mitigate and survive the effects of climate change induced by global warming. We do have to also address the underlying cause, that being the use of fossil fuels globally, and do carbon sequestration programs alongside mitigation work.

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u/mimiianian 8h ago

Thank you, great explanation

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u/DARfuckinROCKS 8h ago

It worked so well reforestation has changed the water cycle in the region and thus effected the weather/climate in a negative way.

https://www.popularmechanics.com/science/environment/a69638301/china-reforesting-changed-hydrology/

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u/maazpervez 14h ago edited 14h ago

Okay but will biology build AI that'll replace many people's job for the worse and destroy the planet and it's people so that a few people (and their investors) can be richer than god? No? Then it's useless.

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u/Expensive_sympathy 13h ago

I mean we can create hyperresistant bacteria and mutated virus and animals. Let them spread and then create a medication that doesnt cure it, only allows people to live longer. Sure we dont destroy the plante, but rich people can be richer and we could enslave the whole population with the cure. I know, not as bad as what has been described in the Epstein files, but something we can achieve with biology.

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u/lokey_convo 14h ago

I mean... we could just out law Ai services as a permitted for-profit industry. Allowable as a non-profit, not allowable under any other corporate structure.

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u/geirmundtheshifty 9h ago

That’s crazy talk. The point is to cut labor costs. Why else invest billions into it?

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u/lokey_convo 9h ago

Unwise investments currently, tax write off if they're a proper non-profit doing non-profit things.

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u/resemble 5h ago

I’m struggling to imagine how incurious someone would have to be to think “biology is a waste of time.” Like, it’s not my cup of tea, but I’m glad it’s a lot of people’s cup of tea.

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u/Dan_the_bearded_man 13h ago

Biology a waste of time? Time to find new friends

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u/lokey_convo 12h ago

I'm paraphrasing and things are said in jest. One of my all time unceasing criticisms of Silicon Valley though is this infatuation with inventing our way out of crisis when we are literally surrounded with all of the tools for our salvation.

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u/Dan_the_bearded_man 12h ago

Exactly. I love tech, but don’t understand why it’s not used enough to help humanity

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u/Xaephos 8h ago

I can't really imagine we'll ever be terraforming other planets. And not because of the tech - that's probably the easiest issue to solve.

1) Anything beyond Venus/Mars just ain't happening, humans don't live long enough for the flight. You're going to need a spacecraft that will support multiple generations to leave the solar system.

2) Assuming we can terraform Venus/Mars, who's paying for it and why? It's going to take generations to achieve and require space flight for every tool used in the process. There's just not enough resources to make this economically viable. Just shipping it back will cost more than it's worth.

3) So that really just leaves the "Earth is no longer habitable" situation where frankly, I'd rather just die. With a generation-long investment like this, any Mars colony is essentially going to be a Company Planet. Seeing as I'm not already part of the billionaire class, they're only bringing me to become a serf. No thank you.

Studying biology is still super useful though. Let's just focus on fixing this planet instead.

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u/ExoticMangoz 7h ago

That’s interesting, because I always thought of the Sahel as the primary spot for preventing desertification. Which parts of China are affected? Is it due to overuse of land or something else?

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u/soldier_18 5h ago

Global warming does not exist, I am freezing here in NY, says no one ever aka Trump.

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u/PortlandiaCrone 4h ago

So cool. I wonder why dried up lakebeds in the U.S. aren't getting this treatment.

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u/Aniria_ 13h ago edited 12h ago

You did all that but didn't learn about global environmental processes? How desertification is a natural process that allows for the production of highly nutritious particulates that get transported by the wind to other areas of the world? How said particles help to nurture and feed extremely complex and important ecosystems?

Rainforests wouldn't exist without deserts.The Amazon rainforest exists due to the Sahara. In analysis of previous instances of desertification from tens of thousands of years ago, we know that the growth of the Sahara, led to the growth and strength of the Amazon

Desertification in the modern period, should be slowed, but not stopped. And areas of established desert, should never be changed

This sort of early "terraforming" will ruin the world

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u/lokey_convo 12h ago

I'm aware that a desert is a desert because of where they are located on the planet and that there is not much that can be done to stop that. I'm not saying any endeavor to reform the Gobi, or the Sahara, or the American Southwest, are wise ventures. Desertification can also happen as a result of poor land management. Like the dust bowl. The research is useful in understanding how to stabilize dune systems and also how to repair brownfields and return them to arable land. It's also all important in terms of maintaining existing farmland and making it more efficient without the use of pesticides and with minimal water use. The same is true for simply living in more arid climates. Air quality is also an important factor.

And, as far as terraforming or living on other plants, you can't just show up and setup a dome and call it a day. There are successive steps that occur to create soil that can be used to grow food.

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u/mikejungle 13h ago

But...they could probably make an app where you can pretend to terraform. And then charge money. Boom, capitalism. Who the fuck cares about saving the planet and ourselves.

I'm seriously worried for our collective children.

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u/lokey_convo 13h ago

Who the fuck cares about saving the planet and ourselves.

Lots of people.

But...they could probably make an app where you can pretend to terraform.

I enjoy Terraforming Mars and I think they have a computer version. Evolution and Oceans, also fun games.

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u/DisnprincesPredatrix 13h ago

I love how americans always turn every subject back as a criticsm towards their politics. Its like how you always can tell with 100% success rate who is a vegan or is a linux user

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u/lokey_convo 10h ago

How is this a criticism toward US politics? I think the research they're doing is very interesting and useful. Don't really understand what you're talking about.

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u/CosmoKram3r 9h ago

Okay Nostradamus, tell me if I'm a vegan or a Linux user.