[HN Gopher] Deserts 'breathe' water vapor, study shows
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Deserts 'breathe' water vapor, study shows
Author : PaulHoule
Score : 67 points
Date : 2022-03-30 15:36 UTC (7 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (news.cornell.edu)
(TXT) w3m dump (news.cornell.edu)
| seltzered_ wrote:
| There is a lot being talked about in terms of water vapor and
| 'new water paradigm' ideas. Here's a small webinar series that
| goes into a collaborative effort to draft 'water principles' to
| understand water vapor more: https://earth-
| regenerators.mn.co/events/how-to-restore-the-w...
|
| Basically there are some concepts around atmospheric river 'heart
| pumps' associated with forests, evapotranspiration and it's role
| in the 'small water cycle', how moisture can 'hop' from coast
| further inland (or not), and how urbanization & modern
| agriculture has impacted water (urban heat dome effect, water
| drainage, etc.). There's probably some interesting
| opportunities/research in seeing this better.
| aurizon wrote:
| This means that there may be a way to change the net water
| balance in desert areas to enhance plant growth. One effective
| method is a water barrier(black plastic) with a few inches of
| sand to weight it down. Then every 10-15 feet you make a slope
| graded round are 5.7.5 feet across and make small hole(3-5
| inches) in this plastic and you plant a desert tree in that hole.
| Next you kill all goats in the area and make them extinct in that
| wide area.(Goats create deserts by cropping all tree
| branches/leaves/roots and are felt by many to have contributed to
| the desertification of North Africa(and other places). Deserts
| get some rain - whatever they get is directed to the graded holes
| and the cover limits evaporation. Drip irrigation to each tree
| will help it to establish. The drop in evaporation will add to
| the retained water budget and tree transpired water will
| contribute to potential cloud formation and rain as the process
| is continued. One of the desert elimination projects now underway
| to plant tree in this area need to adopt these practices over a
| wide area. https://www.greatgreenwall.org/about-great-green-wall
| dylan604 wrote:
| Or, we could just build giant solar farms in the desert to
| change its climate:
|
| https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.aar5629
| ghostbrainalpha wrote:
| Sounds like Liet-Kynes plan to terraform Dune.
| screye wrote:
| One meta question is whether this problem is worth solving at
| all ? There are places where forests are much easier to grow,
| and we are cutting them down by the thousands on a daily basis.
|
| For carbon capture, it is much easier to densify regions with
| already suitable conditions than trying to plant a few trees in
| inhospitable regions.
|
| Food is a solved problem in the modern era. High cost
| agriculture is unsustainable in a global market. If non-
| mechanized farmers in highly arable places (India) are being
| priced out, then what hope does harsh desert agriculture have ?
|
| Given other 'low hanging fruit' solutions, is the opportunity
| cost of pursuing such a solution too high ?
| brudgers wrote:
| For about six thousand years (at least), turning deserts and
| other marginal terrain into croplands is what tends to
| distinguish civilizations from non-civilizations: cities
| being a byproduct of the scale of agriculture activities
| water movement processes make possible.
|
| Which is not me saying it is good or bad.
|
| Just me saying 'it is.'
|
| With the point being it is worth deciding if there is a baby
| in the bath water. Or irrigation canal so to speak before
| deciding which moral high ground is rocky and which is silty.
| andscoop wrote:
| > Food is a solved problem in the modern era.
|
| Solved problem? We've hardly even identified the actual
| problem.
|
| As it it stands now farming is an open loop system and input
| supplies are becoming constrained and expensive. We have
| killed our soils and the dirt that is left behind requires
| external inputs to produce current crop numbers.
|
| In addition to this, we grow a large portion of our food in
| the United States in areas with active droughts and impending
| water shortages.
|
| Fortunately there are better ways to do things, I just don't
| know that we can change fast enough.
|
| To address the greater point of your comment though, I agree.
| sbierwagen wrote:
| >Food is a solved problem in the modern era.
|
| It's "solved" if you can produce synthetic fertilizers from
| fossil fuels indefinitely.
| aurizon wrote:
| The idea is to enlarge the arable/growth area or all those
| people will die or move and transfer the crowding to another
| area - which might then get depleted...
| aurizon wrote:
| We are in such great danger that we need to do many positive
| moves in parallel to save our collective asses... This
| stupidity in Ukraine endangers millions.
| Melatonic wrote:
| Or maybe we just need actual predators of those goats?
| aurizon wrote:
| Mankind needs a top predator - who walks among them,
| predation occurs, and population density declines...
| lostapathy wrote:
| Humans are predators too!
| Melatonic wrote:
| The problem is humans usually displace or kill the
| predators at the top of the food chain (since we are the
| top) which then allows the stuff below it to grow beyond
| what it should.
|
| So for example if something like a large cat was normally
| hunting these goats it is very possible humans would have
| been threatened by the presence of the cats (or been
| annoyed that the cats were killing domesticated animals)
| and then hunted those to extinction. Very common throughout
| human history.
| pengaru wrote:
| Something that will never cease to amaze me is how damp desert
| land tends to be just feet below the surface. Even months since
| the last rain event, I'll go dig a hole on my land in the Mojave
| and with little effort I'm digging through sand that's damp-
| smelling and visibly darker and cooler from retained moisture.
| Return to the hole a day later and its a lighter shade of brown,
| all dried up from exposure.
| msandford wrote:
| In a weird way this makes sense to me. A lot of what takes
| water out of the ground is plants with their roots that extend
| way, way down. No plants means no roots and no shortcuts to get
| the water out. It has to go out the old fashioned way by
| diffusion.
|
| The thinker the dry layer the more "insulating" it is from a
| water diffusion standpoint. It's kind of like lake ice. The
| thicker it gets the slower it gets thicker.
| Julesman wrote:
| What a crappy intro. No, deserts are NOT alive. Interesting
| stuff. Not the brightest writer in the bunch.
| uoaei wrote:
| I am willing to bet money that you have never seriously
| grappled with the question of what is alive or not.
| ganzuul wrote:
| Well duh. Deserts are not alive because they are dead. Save
| soil. consciousplanet.org
| nameless912 wrote:
| Computer, please define metaphor.
| aurizon wrote:
| Well, the granary of the roman empire was gradually ruined by
| man. animal and climate drift. Some say goats inexorably
| stripped all green plants and shifted the ecology. Other say
| the climate drift? Was one caused by the other?
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sahara
|
| https://www.prb.org/resources/africas-struggle-with-desertif...
| brimble wrote:
| > What a crappy intro.
|
| There was nothing about feces in the intro.
| janci wrote:
| It's the great maker that breathe water and makes spice.
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