The fastest growing desert on Earth, stretching across Mongolia and China’s northwest, is the Gobi Desert. It covers an area of 1.2 million square kilometers. However, the Gobi Desert adds approximately 6,000 new square kilometers each year to this number.
It expands and devours grasslands, swallows entire villages, and transforms vast swathes fertile land into an inhospitable wasteland. Tens of thousands have already been forced from their homes and only a handful of thousand can live in the region.
Natural processes can lead to desertification, the process by which previously fertile soil becomes a desert. Humans play an important role in the rapid spread of desertification.
There are four main causes of soil degradation worldwide: Excessive water use in industrial agriculture, more frequent severe droughts, deforestation and overgrazing by livestock.
The destruction of once fertile, lush landscapes is threatening the livelihoods of over one billion people around the world and the survival of millions more species. Projections suggest that by the middle of this century, a quarter of all soil on Earth will be impacted by desertification.
It’s a grim outlook. It can be reversed, however.
You can harness torrential rains in the desert
One promising solution is located near Mecca. It’s the Al Baydha Project. Experts in desert agriculture devised a method to bring desolate soils to life with torrential rainfall.
When it rains in Saudi Arabia, a huge amount of water often falls in a short space of time as was the case in April 2021 when entire cities were briefly flooded. It’s not easy for soils to store all the water that comes at once.
“We thought, If we can get that water in the ground, it might be a sustainable water source even if it doesn’t rain for 20 years,” Neil Spackman, a former director of Al Baydha Project and expert in regenerative agricultural, said.
Together with villagers living in the area, the agricultural experts built dams and terraces along the rock walls that border the valley in western Saudi Arabia, along with kilometer-long ditches. When it rains, water collects and is directed to the areas it is needed. It can also seep into the ground slowly. This type of irrigation works everywhere and was used centuries ago by the Incas from South America.
Even the Incas used terrace gardening to improve irrigation
To kickstart the natural cycle in Saudi Arabia, experts initially used artificial irrigation. The trick was that the soil was soaked with significantly more water than it was taken out. The soil was once just sand, stone. But native trees, shrubs, grasses and grasses grew again, even after enduring a prolonged drought without irrigation for 30 months.
How renewable energy makes it rain
North Africa, not far from Saudi Arabia is trying to stop desertification.
The Sahara covers more than 9 million square kilometers. Like the Gobi, it continues its growth in some areas at almost 50 kilometers per year. The Sahara is surrounded by arid areas that are alive, though not for very long. Desertification has caused the destruction of fertile land by humans to make them more endangered than any other part of the world. Environmental degradation is a constant threat to land ownership and poverty.
These are the ideal solutions to stop the desert from taking control.
How? You make it rain.
It works this way: The black surface of solar panels heats the atmosphere, which then rises higher to the atmosphere. The air rises due to the rotation of thousands wind turbines. “These air masses cool down when they reach higher elevations. […]It becomes colder, and the moisture condenses, which turns into rain, and falls down,” says Safa Motte, a University of Maryland physicist and co-author of a study.
The Sahara could see huge solar and wind farms that could increase rainfall.
Experts estimate that one fifth of the Sahara Desert could be used for solar and/or wind farms. This would bring about five centimeters of rain per year to the south of Sahara. It may not sound like much but it could increase plant cover by 20% in the region and boost agriculture greatly. It would be a win-win situation for people and the environment.
Mote claims that a large-scale solar and wind farm could produce four times more electricity in a year than the world consumes today. This could help African countries become more resilient. If the political will is there to support the project, the physicist thinks that the enormous implementation costs of approximately $20 trillion (17.5 Trillion) would be manageable.
Reversing desertification
China is testing another, natural way to make the desert fertile again. It’s already been a success.
According to China’s State Forestry and Grassland Administrations, China’s deserts grew by 10,000 km/year just a few decades ago. They are shrinking by more then 2,000 sq km per year.
But how do you do it?
To protect the salt mine transport routes, people began planting trees in the Kubuqi Desert north of Beijing in 1988. This has been one of the most successful reforestation programmes in the world over the past decade.
The Kubuqi Desert was cleared to reduce the number of sandstorms in Beijing.
Instead of planting trees in the normal way, water jets have been developed to water the trees in the sand dune. These water jets can drill holes in the sand while simultaneously watering the young cuttings. Barron Joseph Orr (Lead Scientist for the United Nations Convention to Combat Desertification) says that this has cut down the time it takes to plant a tree.
Kubuqi’s farmers also place straw rolls on the dunes to protect the young plants against the wind.
The new grasslands serve as grazing areas and cultivation areas for farmers who grow liquorice, and other herbs that do well in arid environments and are highly sought-after for traditional Chinese medicine.
The Kubuqi Desert’s greening has had positive effects as far as Beijing, 800 km away. Since then, air pollution from sandstorms is significantly reduced.
Can technology be used to stop desertification?
It is possible for soil and vegetation to be revived and water cycles to be restored using either nature-based or high-tech methods.
However, the effort and costs involved are too high for all of the world’s deserted areas to be transformed into healthy soils.
Experts say the only way to prevent fertile soils from drying out and deserts from spreading is to stop the relentless exploitation of soils and overuse of finite water sources.