Regreening the Desert

The Sun Also Rises Radio Show ^ | 23 June 2021

[Thistooshallpass9]

This episode is about China's Loess Plateau, which was anciently a lush area. But as more people made it their home, the demand for resources grew. Over the course of thousands of years, aggressive farming and overgrazing stripped away the vegetation almost entirely. This lead to severe soil erosion and eventually turned the Loess plateau into basically a denuded desert. In the mid 1990s, Chinese and foreign scientists and civil engineers surveyed this area to see if anything could be done to restore the land. The project that followed has implications that go far beyond China.

[Rlsau1]

Increases in the level of CO2 will do the same thing, and is already doing it. While the increase CO2 level can’t do anything for soil erosion, it makes it much easier for plant life to flourish where other requirements are negligible.

[alloysteel]

Make the desert bloom. This would be easier if there were a fairly large body of water nearby. Drilling deep, to pull up “fossil water” from deep aquifers, only exacerbates the problem, as they dry up and the desert returns. Applying “dryland” agriculture, taking a crop only once every two or three years, leaving the land fallow for the intervening period, with a grassland cover, is much more sustainable, and selection of crops that can grow and mature, producing a harvest of adequate proportions, and do it with a minimum of water, extends this out even further.

Or perhaps the north slope of the Himalayan Mountains can be tapped for a source of water, and with the introduction of holding dams, much of the spring runoff can be held until released to irrigate the land throughout the season. This may involve moving the water through viaducts for perhaps hundreds of miles, but with enough will and proper engineering, this can be done as it once was in the San Joaquin valley in California, a truly remarkable system that worked quite well until it became necessary to “preserve” the habitat of the snail darter in the San Francisco Bay estuary, But that was a decision by politicians, and not by engineers.

[hinckley buzzard]

Apparently there is sufficient rainfall, the desert conditions being due to long term human activity. Soil conservation policies together with CO2 enrichment of the atmosphere should be sufficient to restore the area.

[MercyFlush]

A bunch of my friends are farmers in the California Delta and were it not for the environmental concerns then the misnamed “Bay Delta Conservation Project” would be reality. The BDCP was simply the marketing package for the LA water tunnels...which are still in play.

The BDCP plan was for LA to seize 175,000 acres of farmland, dispossess 45,000 people of their homes at prices of typically 1% to 5% of market value, and then turn the California Delta into a salt water estuary.

All of this so LA real estate interests would be able to develop California City (where a coincidental HSR station is planned), and then to develop San Bernadino County. The cost to Northern California be damned.

So if a fish can stop LA from raping Northern California and turning it into a desert then God bless the fish!

[Pollard]

A guy named Geoff Lawton did a project near in Jordan the Nile river and was making progress. Then he left it to the locals for a couple of years and they let it turn back to desert. They even brought goats in and let them eat all the vegetation he planted.

Another guy did projects further South but still muslim and the way he put it was; "They just can't be bothered".

Of course the USA has had it's issues like the dust bowl but that wasn't from laziness. That was from over-actively working the soil with machines and leaving it bare too often. Humus takes years to develop and we can wipe it out in mere months.

Greening the Desert project in Jordan. He's never worked it full time, year round. Started out with less vegetation than the first pic. This is about the hardest place on earth to renew. Below sea level, highly salted soils. The locals freaked out one time about something growing under the mulch. Mushrooms or fungus.

The area now fenced in supplies people inside and some outside with fruits and veggies. Some people outside the project have started working on the same thing. Not a huge project but proof that desert can have green stuff and shade and produce food. Most of the trees produce food too. He started out by cutting swales on contour to catch what little rain they get and planted drought tolerant trees on the back side of the swales. Then food producing understory trees and food producing ground vegetation. The locals thought he was crazy for not going in straight lines.

I think it makes more sense to start at the edge of where land is being turned into desert and try to reverse the loss, especially on the edge that gives afternoon shade.

My project is different. Turning 14 acres of hilly forest into partly shaded pasture. Without losing top soil.

[Augie]

China has no shortage of labor, and no shortage of water.

Just set up a bucket brigade and tote some of the extra from the lowland rivers when they flood.

[ckilmer]

The solution to california’s water problem is to collapse the cost of water desalination so water from the colorado river and the sierra nevadas doesn’t need to be piped to southern california.

The maddening thing is that Israel and Singapore have already got desalinated seawater costs to under $500@acre foot. That’s close to being cheaper than the water from the california aqueduct.

Whereas the latest and greatest US poiseden plant in southern california does the job for $2000@acre foot.

[MercyFlush]

The first solution is to prohibit Los Angeles and the mobbed up Metropolitan Water District from scheming to steal water from outside of the LA basin.

The schemes from MWD over the years read almost like those of a comic book villain who goes from plan to plan in their quest to take over the world.

A recurring scheme is to tap the Columbia River via a pipeline through the Willamette Valley dumping the water into Lake Shasta. A recent version of this scheme was defeated when LA tried to fund a dam in Canada with an eye on exporting the water to LA. The Canadian government killed that plan once they saw LA was involved.

They’ve tried to take water from the Fraser River in British Columbia via a giant hose that would go along the ocean floor from Canada to LA.

They tried to survey the Yukon River in Alaska for a similar project only to have then-Alaskan Governor Sarah Palin order them to stop.

They’ve proposed a ‘national water grid’ similar to the national power grid which would allow them to suck water from the Great Lakes, the Mississippi, the Ohio, and etc.

The better solution is either desalinization or else to simply prohibit LA from taking anyone else’s water. Force them to look at desal or else just ration what they have.

But no more trying to rob someone else of their water so the lawns of the rich and famous can be kept green.

[Thistooshallpass9]

Very interesting project. Pretty remarkable to see what can be done, but as you said, the locals have to be committed. All the best with your own project there!

[Pollard]

Finally figured out that the best thing to do here on the hilly spots, is cut down a strip of trees low to the ground and unroll a round bale of hay on it to hold the humus & topsoil in place while seeding it at the same time. Our meat goats will eat some of it and fertilize it. Once they’ve soiled it too much, they don’t want to eat it, naturally. That leaves enough still in place.

Probably 20-30 trees of various sizes to cut down to unroll one bale. I’m leaving the nicer, bigger, acorn & hickory nut producing trees. Most of the hills slant South and I don’t want full sun on those South facing slopes as that’s where the winds come from in warm/hot weather. Keep the ground partially shaded and the breeze will be cooler.

Where I drove around the perimeter 100 times on the tractor to put up the fence, I lost three inches of top soil on very rocky hills. Now I have a bunch of rocks to drive over, some very pointy. Don’t want to do that to the rest. I’ll have to dump some gravel over the bad spots and I know from our driveway that grass will grow in gravel once it catches enough humus.

I’m in the Ozarks, hence the rockiness but I did find a small piece of land with 1-2 foot deep top soil on the 4 acre flat part. USDA Web Soil Survey calls it Prime Farmland, clayey loam. Took us two years to find it. Most small pieces are real bad. Concrete for soil, North or West facing elevations, no flat areas, no utilities running right down the road, no county/state road maintenance. We found one that would have been $14k to bring power in. This one is close to the big phone/dsl junction box with a fence around it and it’s own electric service so our dsl is as strong as downtown. Didn’t know that benefit until we had phone/dsl installed.

Should have started all this when I was 25, not 45. Been her ten years so make that 55.