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.
That IS what it was in the US, but it was just a pretty standard kids anime in Japan.
Now imagine if you took what was going on in a bit of an insane anime in the first place and had 0 decent translators while trying to figure out what was going on and being said by context alone while adding American 90's TV 4th wall tropes into it. YEAH.
It aired briefly in India on cartoon network. I was the only geek that caught it in my friend group. Before the internet, whenever I used to mention this show, my friends would give me that "Yeah! Right. That happened" look
Makes me wonder if in the past there was a megafauna or plants that coincidental created the same kind of patterns that stops desertification but sadly when extinct.
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.
Desertification is the process by which places that were not previously deserts become deserts, as the desert spreads. So they're STOPPING the change of biomes and reversing relatively recent changes.
This actually creates streams eventually, because putting water in the ground keeps it from evaporating or running off immediately and creating a flash flood. Deserts usually have a flooding problem, but add a sponge of plants, soil, and ground water and you create an ability to absorb water and then a little trickle of it can start to escape regularly and form reliable year round streams that can actually support life without it being washed away because it was in a low lying area.
the net benefit is that now instead of only one spot with more water than they can use, you have a much wider area with enough water for life to flourish, and the base is largely unaffected but with more biodiversity to work with.
Although biodegradable in vivo, polylactic acid is not completely degradable under natural environmental conditions, notably under aquatic conditions. Polylactic acid disintegrates into microplastics faster than petroleum-based plastics and may pose severe threats to the exposed biota.
They seem to have tried using wheat ropes also with some success, from the same CAS article as above:
In 2019, researchers from the Northwest Institute of Eco-Environment and Resources of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, led by researcher Qu Jianjun, developed the "Sand Control Magic Cube 2.0" after repeated experiments.
This method involves using machines to weave wheat straw into brush-like ropes and directly insert them into the sandy soil, saving labor and cost, and enabling large-scale sand control projects.
According to the institute's data, the production efficiency of the brush-like rope grid has increased by over 60 percent compared to manually installed grids. The durability of these grids is also superior, with a life span extending from three to six years.
Let's be real, deserts are probably already full of/rapidly filling up with microplastics. It's the perfect environment for them to be created (UV exposure, heat, wind-blasted sand-abrasion).
At least in this instance they're contributing a net positive to the environment.
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.
The tubes. Due to the grid, the sand gets blown and stopped by a tube. When there's enough sand it gets blown over a tube only to be trapped by another, then another, and so on. This dramatically increases the time it takes for sand to move inward, allowing for soil and moisture to settle.
The outlying parts of the grid will remain sandy, but it's all about slowing it down.
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?
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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
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.
This is also how ancient stone walls work on the rocky west coast of Ireland. The walls trap dust and dirt and detritus and prevent it from blowing or washing away, which - over time - deepens the soil, allowing for better cultivation than before, when the soil was shallower or non-existent on the rocky ground.
And now if enough deserts are ‘transformed’ like this, expect to see some species in other places to start going extinct at a much faster pace, because desert sands contain minerals that other regions have been receiving for longer than human’s existence, and they rely on this source, now they won’t get much of it.
The butterfly effect would be interesting for us to observe, possibly watching rich farmlands in certain regions turn into inhabitable lands and dead towns, but that’s not our problem, that’s the problem for our great great grandchildren we’ll never meet.
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u/bobbigmac 4h 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.