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Desertification
A Global Concern
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Desertification in China
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Dried up river in China
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Sudan - aftermath of war
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The United Nations is helping via The International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD)
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IFAD Photo
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Life struggles to survive
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Overgrazing – A dead cow in Niger
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Namibia desert
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The edge of the Sahara desert
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Linear dunes of the Sahara Desert encroach on Nouakchott, the capital of Mauritania.
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Recent incident possibly caused in part by too much water being taken from the ground in the community
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A sinkhole in Guatemala
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Deserts are expanding
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Areas in brown and yellow are deserts. You can see sand swallowing the planet.
But there is still hope
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Dust Bowl in the U.S. in the 1920’s
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Damage in U.S. desert areas
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Off-road vehicles significantly increase soil loss in the delicate desert environment of the western United States. In a few seconds, soils that took hundreds of years to develop can be destroyed (photograph by Terrence Moore).
Closed road and OHV damage through wildflowers below the Kingston Range, Silurian Valley, California
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Local Remedies
• In areas of sand dunes, covering the dunes with large boulders or petroleum will
interrupt the wind near the face of the dunes and prevent the sand from moving.
Sand fences are used throughout the Middle East and the United States, in the same
way snow fences are used in the north.
• Oases and farmlands in windy regions can be protected by planting tree fences or grass belts.
• A "Green Wall," which will eventually stretch more than 5,700 kilometers in length, much longer than the famous Great Wall, is being planted in northeastern China to protect "sandy lands"--deserts believed to have been created by human activity.
• More efficient use of existing water resources and control of salinization are other effective tools for improving arid lands. New ways are being sought to use surface-water resources such as rain water harvesting or irrigating with seasonal runoff .
• If we are to stop and reverse the degradation of arid and semiarid lands, we must understand how and why the rates of climate change, population growth, and food production adversely affect these environments.
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Reforestation in China
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