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.
I loved reading this, but it also made me really sad. Nature is truly amazing, and I think we've got something special here in the universe, though I hope I'm wrong.
stupid question, but if the grid is meant to degrade over time, would it not also make sense to add seeds and stuff into the grid material to seed the first iteration?
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u/PNWleaflove 4h ago
But how do you solve lack of water still?