Desertification is the “cancer” of the earth, because it lacks water, is dry, and the surface is full of sand, which is completely incompatible with the survival conditions of crops and humans. In addition, the strong wind will cover the sky with gravel, and it can bury people and objects wherever it goes.
Desertification is the “cancer” of the earth
The weather in the desert is also unpredictable. Even if people bring enough food, it is very dangerous and cannot survive for a long time. It can be seen that the existence of the desert is a great threat to humans. Moreover, if there is no human intervention, its area will become larger and larger, and the land for human life will be compressed more and more.
It is precisely because of the fear of such threats that countries around the world are actively preventing and controlling sand.
China’s sand control effect is particularly obvious. Some desert areas in the country have gradually become oases, and the surrounding climate has also improved. But this is only the effect of China. Looking around the world, the area of deserts is still slowly expanding, quietly swallowing up the world.
The deserts around us are expanding
Earlier, the “Climate Magazine” published a report that was very worrying. The report said that the Sahara Desert, the world’s largest desert, has been growing. In the past century, its area has expanded by 10%. The bad weather in many countries is caused by its sand and dust.
The area of the Sahara Desert is about 9.32 million square kilometers, almost catching up with China. The second largest is the Arabian Desert in northeastern Africa, which covers an area of about 2.33 million square kilometers.
This adds up to an area of more than 11 million square kilometers. If it can be turned into an oasis, how much living area will humans have?
If you think these two deserts are too far away from us and will not have any impact, then let’s take a look at the Gobi Desert. This is the largest desert between Mongolia and my country, and the third largest desert in the world, with an area of about 1.3 million square kilometers.
The Gobi Desert is the fastest growing desert in the world, and it can devour 6,000 square kilometers of grassland and villages every year
If your impression of Mongolia is still stuck in the beautiful scenery of cattle and sheep in the wind, you are wrong.
Mongolia’s current environmental problems are already quite serious. What’s more serious is that their country has not paid attention to it, or in other words, it has no ability to stop the expansion of the desert.
Since March 2023, the sandstorms that have broken out in northern China have been largely caused by the Mongolian desert. At the beginning of April, Dunhuang, Gansu has issued a yellow warning for sandstorms. Since April 3, sandstorms have caused visibility in many areas of Dunhuang to be less than 1,000 meters, and strong winds have reached levels 8 to 9, making it difficult for local people to even go out.
These rounds of sandstorms also reveal the true situation of Mongolia’s environment: overgrazing and deforestation are causing rapid soil and water loss in Mongolia.
Deserts are a thorny issue because they are naturally formed. Even without human activity, they will gradually grow due to climate change, not to mention the impact of industrial farming.
Studies have shown that if deserts continue to expand, by the middle of this century, 25% of the world’s normal land will be affected, and 500 million people living in the Middle East, northern Africa and the Sahara will face a survival crisis.
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Expansion of the range based on the Sahara Desert environment
These areas have very little rainfall, and the worst places have only a few centimeters of annual rainfall, and crops cannot survive at all.
In this case, what measures have countries taken to deal with this phenomenon?
Methods of sand control
As mentioned above, China has a lot of experience in sand control. However, in addition to relying on afforestation to prevent desertification like China, there is another method that seems feasible, which is to use floods in the desert to irrigate the desert.
Using floods in the desert to irrigate plants
Floods in the desert may subvert people’s cognition, but it is true.
The Taklimakan Desert suffered a flood in 2021, which also blocked Sinopec’s oil transportation route. However, this flood did not come from the heart of the desert, but from the mountain torrents on the edge of the desert.
Coincidentally, in 2022, Jeddah, Saudi Arabia’s second largest city, also experienced heavy rainfall. In 6 hours, the precipitation reached 86.1 mm
If we can store water when these floods occur and introduce it into the desert, we can irrigate the desert.
This is the view put forward by a regenerative agriculture expert named Nils Bachmann, who has led a team to build dams, terraces and ditches in the African desert, hoping to divert floods and control the desert in Saudi Arabia.
Of course, the method of irrigating the desert with floods was actually used by the Incas in South America hundreds of years ago. Although the initial engineering is very troublesome, after establishing a healthy ecological cycle, the desert can indeed be controlled to a certain extent. After the water and soil are restored to a certain extent, agricultural cultivation will be increased to provide humans with an ideal habitat.
If a desert ecological cycle is formed, the problem of desertification will be greatly weakened
Bachman’s plan has been implemented since 2010. He has experimented in the Sahara Desert, which has created an oasis in the Sahara for a short period of time. However, under the influence of human activities, the Sahara is now expanding its “territory” at a rate of 48 kilometers per year.
It is worth mentioning that some people have speculated earlier that it is the solar power generation and wind power plants built by humans in the desert that have caused soil erosion? Will dismantling them slow down the speed of desertification?
In this regard, Bachman said that these new power generation equipment can actually bring precipitation. For example, the black surface of solar panels can heat the surrounding air, and the operation of wind turbines has the same effect. When hot air rises and meets cold air, it can bring precipitation.
Building large-scale solar and wind power plants in the desert will help increase rainfall
If one-fifth of the Sahara Desert is equipped with these power generation equipment, rainfall will increase by 5 cm, artificially planted vegetation will be more likely to survive, and vegetation coverage will increase by nearly 20%.
By building a data model based on this, desert areas from east to west Africa can be effectively managed. With increased vegetation and expanded agricultural areas, food production will increase accordingly, and the ecological environment will also be improved.
