Comment on Why don't we pump seawater into deserts to revive them?
LordOfTheChia@lemmy.world 11 months ago
So first off, the water would need to be desalinated or you would ensure the land would be unsuitable for farming (and really growing anything) for generations.
Also, sand doesn’t hold water. In fact, when planting trees and other bushes, if you want more drainage, you typically add rocks and sand.
Second, most plants need non-sandy soil to grow on (palm trees and other beach bushes and plants aside) though those grow in areas that have lots of rain already.
Thirdly, the soil will need bacteria to aid the plants in obtaining nutrients and breaking down waste (dead leaves, dead plantlife, etc).
The way to do it is to look at a couple of projects that are fighting against desertification in Africa:
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The Great Green Wall …nationalgeographic.org/…/great-green-wall/
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Using compostable waste to fertilize soil jstories.media/…/greening-the-desert-with-trash
You’ll notice that many of these projects start at the edges of deserts. Instead of relying on pumping water onto sandy soil (which would just suck up the water as sand doesn’t hold water that well) they focus on extending the non desert ecosystem onto the desert so that the new soil will absorb water better, the weather over the newly terraformed area will be less dry, and it will eventually be self sustaining.