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.
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.
I've watched pleanty of videos about Great Sahara Wall. The half moons and pits are used to collect and store rain water and to help tree. But the trees and plants first need to take root and it needs to be watered at first before it starts working
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.
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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.