Bacteria Could Help Stop Desertification

Bridgette Steffen writes "In attempt to slow down desertification, a student at London's Architectural Association has proposed a 6000 km sandstone wall that will not only act as a break across the Sahara Desert, but also serve as refugee shelter. Last fall it won first prize in the Holcim Foundation's Awards for Sustainable Construction, and will use bacteria to solidify the sandstone."

Re:How will a wall help ?

[Tubal-Cain]

If most of the sand blows along the ground, it will collect at the base of the wall until it becomes a long sand dune. Since they are using bacteria, I could imagine them then solidifying the uppermost portion of the dune to make it higher. Rinse and repeat until your mountain (or hill) chain stops growing.

Re:Specifics

[rolfwind]

I read a while ago about a German guy who invented a way to make farmable land out of desert:
http://www.spiegel.de/international/business/0,1518,551152,00.html [spiegel.de]
(He moved on to make a radar camoflaging paint):

"The project seemed promising at first, as cucumbers, radishes and beans thrived on Nickel's test fields on the outskirts of Abu Dhabi. But the project also consumed vast numbers of worms -- 3,000 per square meter, to be exact -- which eventually made the project too costly for its sponsors."

I wonder what the costs between the two projects are or if they could be used in conjuction with each other (to lower costs) somehow.

Re:deserts move all the time

[digitalunity]

It's hardly anthropomorphic to describe nature as self correcting. Life on earth survived for what, like a billion years without modern man fucking it up? Pretty much a model for sustainability if you ask me.

A balanced and closed ecosystem is naturally self correcting. Humans will prove no different. The available resources will be consumed, humans will die off in large numbers and a balance will be reached eventually where real sustainability can be achieved.

This of course assumes we don't discover a way to leave the planet in droves, aren't wiped out by a meteor and don't start a nuclear holocaust first.

Re:I for one

[Anonymous Coward]

So how do you explain white fellas paying $100 a cup for coffee made from cat shit [telegraph.co.uk]? Maybe the dung has nothing to do with it and you are racist who has it if for Aborigines, no matter what they do?

Re:How will a wall help ?

[MichaelSmith]

Years ago I read about a plan to build a huge wall (for want of a better name) in central Australia. The wall would be thousands of metres high with a triangular cross section. In effect, an artificial north-south mountain range. The idea is that a lot of water vapour crosses Australia without precipitating because it never gets pushed to high enough altitudes to cool and condense. The article also suggested that the interior of the mountain could be used to store grains. I suppose these days we would put Afghan refugees in there as well.

Re:Is there any desertification to stop though?

[interkin3tic]

Where that is defined as deserts which are advancing, and whose advance is not containable by substitution of sustainable farming practices for unsustainable ones...

Kind of a trivial semantic argument right there. Whatever the cause, whatever you call it, it's not good for people who are going to be living in sand soon.

There is no such evidence. All that is needed is sensible traditional mixed farming. And a lot less journalistic blather about desertification that is not happening, global warming that is not happening, and how the one imaginary event is a consequence of the other imaginary event. And for well meaning idiots to stop subsidizing goats.

It would be nice if they practiced responsible farming, yes. Why isn't that happening already? Is there another problem upstream of unsustainable farming practices that's causing everyone to farm stupidly? Like maybe dumb economic systems that make it such that anyone who farms anything besides goats is quickly going to lose the farm and be replaced by someone who only raises goats?

I don't know if that's the case or not, but I do know that simple answers, like the one you just gave, never work on complex problems, like the one being discussed.

Re:I for one

[robthebloke]

because they are idiots. I tried some once (my housemate got some for Christmas), it tastes exactly the same as weak coffee. Utterly pointless.