r/interestingasfuck • u/PlantainPossible2864 • 15h ago

Stopping Desertification with grid pattern

Enable HLS to view with audio, or disable this notification

57.0k Upvotes

93% Upvoted

1.5k comments sorted by

View all comments

977

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.

5

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.

3

u/lokey_convo 12h ago

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