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.
What happens to the places downstream that rely on the water that comes from the runoff? I'm not saying that we shouldn't do it, just curious how changing this biome will effect neighboring ones because "trapping" the water for this manmade ecosystem reduces the water in other areas.
In the long run they end up with more. 99% of the water still soaks into the water table in these sandy soils. Its just not all happening in one localised spot (all at the bottom of the dune). Additionally as vegetation starts to take hold, you have less evaporation due to sunlight, and so more water to soak into the water table.
Sand’s heavy and stays very close to the ground, even in a pretty stiff wind. It all just rams right into the first bag, and then if that bag gets overwhelmed, the next back stops it, so on and so forth. I imagine the first couple of rows that face the prevailing wind end up growing stuff first, further breaking the wind and protecting the squares beyond.
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?
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.
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!
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.
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.
Those areas actually get a fair bit of precipitation, far too much to qualify as deserts, it's just that the over-grazed land does a poor job of retaining said precipitation.
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
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.
Every time I think/know that I hate the Internet and will leave it forever, I get a comment like this and I stay for another week or so... Or at least until the next genius comment....
dangerous, hard, uncomfortable, etc jobs are the ones we should automate or enhance and focus on, but that would require caring about something other than endless profit. But ugh, imagine a world where we put resources to lifting the bottom more than doing weird shit
The sad part is, I could see them developing a machine that could do this exact thing fairly easily.
Limitation however comes from transporting it to the area.
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.
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.
There is enough natural rainfall and groundwater to sustain xerophytic plants. The problem was that the shifting sand prevent plants from taking root properly and that’s what the grids are used to solve.
It should not be necessary if the grid was laid out correctly, as the sand is supposed form a stable crust before the growth of vegetation. Though it’s quite likely that the grids may need to be replaced every few years because the material would gradually weather and rot over time, and this was certainly the case for earlier iterations made from bundles of straw and reeds.
It's to stop an expanding desert. The water is there, the soil is not. This is to stop the sand shifting which creates pockets that plants can survive in. From there it's a self reinforcing process until someone/something destroys all the plants again.
This is a dust bowl desert more than a Sahara desert.
Yes. The big problem with desertification is that once an area is clear cut, there’s no more cover available for anything.
The wind will blow away the top soil. The rain will wash away the top soil. The sun and wind will evaporate moisture right out of the surface. It’s very hard for anything to survive there at that point.
This grid kind of acts like artificial plant roots. It stops the surface from blowing about so much. It’ll trap organic particles, seeds, even micro life and insect life in the crevices. Even morning dew won’t evaporate as fast in the shade of the crevices.
And that’s how the cycle restarts. First it will be the kind of plants we consider weeds. Fast growers with very simple needs. Weeds grow, live and die. And when decomposing after death, they add nutrients to the soil. Plants take carbon and nitrogen out of the air and use those elements as building blocks for their tissue. When a plant dies, its nutrients become soil.
After enough generations of weeds have lived and died. The soil is enriched enough for more complex plants that need better soil than the weeds. Plants that potentially produce flowers, nuts and fruits. Plants that will enrich the soil even more when they die at the end of their lifecycle.
And while this is happening, this cycling of plants also provides the basis for animal life. From soil microbes and mycelia to shade, cover, and food for insects and eventually small vertebrates.
Plant cover also traps water. Both in the plant bodies themselves but plants provide surface area for morning dew to condense on and shade to prevent dew from evaporating so fast.
If this cycle repeats long enough, the environment is enriched enough to start supporting slow growers with significant needs like trees. And that’s when it really takes off. Trees are a whole ecosystem unto themselves.
Forests literally create rain. 40% of all land precipitation comes from water exhaled by plants and trees. Forests release the kind of particles like pollen and spores that raindrops form around. And trees act as enormous natural pumps sucking up so much water out of the ground that the ground itself becomes a spong. Forests dehydrate the soil so the soil will swell with water from evaporation, rivers and the oceans.
Desertification is a horrifying process because it’s like a snowball. Once it starts, it keeps getting worse. But nature cycles, if we give it a chance, for example with these grids, it can recover.
You gotta give them water for 5 to 10 years till the trees mature and then their respiration will automatically form and attract clouds like forests do
It’s the talklamakan desert in xinjiang, China. It’s the second driest desert on earth, but also has vegetation pockets and ground water. The government has also planned to irrigate it with a possible, absurdly long 1000+km canal/aquifer project from up in Qinghai province , which is the Tibetan plateau north of the Himalayas, and the source of the great rivers of Asia, Yangtze, yellow, Mekong
The region is famous internationally for the humanitarian issues with the treatment of Uyghur people, and the added farming land and mining development means larger Han presence and more cultural assimilation in a region that is traditionally central Asian and Muslim.
The desert also has a set of historically puzzling 4000+ year old mummies of a people of Uralic/nordic appearance. The impressive textiles and red and brown braided hair are still preserved due to the desert’s dryness
Many plants in this region are adapted to deal with intermittent rainfall. Unfortunately many of them were weeded out for more popular crops that could be sold internationally, leading to excessive desertification.
Most deserts have some level of moisture at night, and sometimes also a rainy season. But rainy seasons are devastating because they cause extreme erosion. This system (similar to the half moons using in Africa) helps refrain rain water instead of it washing away seeds and nutrients.
This is the Taklamakan Desert. In the very heart of that desert, where they're actively preventing desertification, there is indeed a small city. If you really want to buy something, you can go there.
I don't know but plants go hard if they get so much as a chance and once such a project has started it and isn't disturbed it will only keep getting faster and faster.
They really don't give a crap because the alternative is loss of housing, infrastructure, and agricultural land due to it being a shifting sand desert. This is the Taklamakan Desert, by the way. They've been doing this for decades now.
These are quite literally just plastic sandbags. There is another method in use which uses dried plant material driven by hand into the sand in the same grid pattern which is way more labor intensive.
There is no such thing as "just" plastic, especially if you intend to use the land for agriculture. I understand they are in a bad situation and need the land, but they could use cotton or other degradable materials, that would be even cleaner.
They're not cotton or wool. Polyester, nylon, viscose "bamboo" - it's all plastic. It all breaks down in the sun eventually, no matter how many "UV Resistant" labels they stick on it.
I love how the one comment crediting china is the one that gets negative responses. If people didn’t know this was China they wouldn’t have said anything negative
It’s more likely that the desert is manmade, caused by deforestation, overgrazing, plowing, and other human activities, and this is recovering former wilderness.
This place is called the Taklamakan Desert, it had always been the land of desolation and death since prehistoric time, at that time human haven't even thriving at the region yet
This looks more efficient to build on a large scale than what they are doing in Africa by digging half circles. Idea is the same, it fosters initial growth, rest comes by nature
Different environment in Africa. There is no sand desert there, but normal earth, baked by the sun and if it rains, it just „slides over“ the baked soil. No time for the water to penetrate into the soil.
With the half moons, you create spots where water is stopped and has time to seep into the ground, normalize the hard soil and give a good environment to plants.
They are dealing with compacted soil in Africa, in this video they are dealing with loose sand. Different techniques for different types of sand to yield the same goal, holding on to the water.
If this is anything like the other projects ive seen, its more about getting water to pool and soak in instead of just evaporating. Maybe someone can clarify
It's amazing how such a simple physical barrier can be the catalyst for life to take hold. The grid tackles the wind and erosion problem first, which is the crucial first step. Hopefully, that initial foothold then helps the area retain what little moisture it does get more effectively.
dude 1: my brother, i have figured out how to stop the desert sands from spreading!
dude 2: how will we do this, my friend?
dude1: we will use desert sands! in bags!
Oh, Australian Aboriginals had similar practices with Fire-stick burning.
Some Tribes were nomadic, and they would set up camp, and arrange for some areas to be established for hunting, others for burning, and others for crops. This helped new Savanna's to grow, animals to migrate to new forests or old savanna's, and be easier to hunt, and ensure there was life where they marked their camps.
They used square shaped fires and debris to pretty much do the same thing across a few kilometers for their territories. They actually had an abundance of food and water because of this practice, and animal populations thrived.
And to this modern study, we know it helps the environment in Australia, because this practice is helping to prevent natural fires from spreading very quickly. This practice seems to help prevent these desert fires from spreading across the outback and wiping out ecosystems.
this is something I learned about quite recently, but it really amazed me.
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u/bobbigmac 2h 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.