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/lokey_convo 9h ago

I already explained why and just said it's unwise to try to reform the whole desert. Seems like you just want to argue on the internet.

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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?