Bacteria Could Help Stop Desertification 218
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."
I for one (Score:2)
Welcome our brick and mortar overlords.
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
No word on your mortar yet, but you can keep your overlords kthxbye.
Re:I for one (Score:5, Funny)
If our overlords are shitting out dung, no matter how useful, I'd prefer then to be underlords, or over-to-one-side-lords, or not-over-my-head-at-least-lords.
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If our overlords are shitting out dung, no matter how useful, I'd prefer then to be underlords, or over-to-one-side-lords, or not-over-my-head-at-least-lords.
Some aborigines consider dung a delicacy, you insensitive clod!!! Consider it a "desert" if you will...
Re:I for one (Score:4, Interesting)
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try not to think of yourself as any better than anyone else.
I do not think of myself as better than anyone else, but the Chinese (up to about 1600 CE, when the emperor pointed the country inward, to protect his power), Arabs/Egyptians/Babylonians (up to about 1500 CE, when the Sultan shut down all but one "University", in order to protect his power), Indians (who also seemed to regress after ) and Europeans (which includes the United States and Canada) (abortively starting with Greece and Rome, then from th
Re:I for one (Score:5, Funny)
If our overlords are shitting out dung
Actually, we should start to worry if they start shitting out anything other than that. At the very least I'd say a trip to the doctor is in order.
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Or it falling on our heads....
Re:I for one (Score:5, Funny)
TFA also has a blurb about "sustainable" bricks... made out of cow dung.
That's just bullshit
deserts move all the time (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:deserts move all the time (Score:4, Insightful)
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Re:deserts move all the time (Score:5, Insightful)
Nature is not "wise", and it is wrong to personify it or otherwise assume otherwise. All nature does is follow the path of least resistance.
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Re:deserts move all the time (Score:5, Insightful)
I was watching a program last night about the evolution of the planet, something about vulcanic activity and the superplume, and other things, as well as the evolution of the first landwalkers (tulogs?) that basically looked like a cross between crocodiles and fish, among all the changes in the environment, as well as mass ocean pollution (millions of years ago) killing a vast number of species.
When someone says nature is wise, they probably are romantizing how much "nature"/god? cares about our survival as a species but also don't want to be at the short end of the evolutionary stick when nature shows it' uncaring side and things change. I'm sure a man-made solutions to various things would be welcomed with open arms then.
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This seems to have 2 very obvious problems...
first of all, this [flickr.com] is what they are talking about harnessing with that wall. I hope those bacteria aren't afraid of heights.
Second, I am no environmentalist (proud to say), but seems to me that making such a large impact on the worlds climate (and the Sahara sandstorm is a force that has effects on the entire globe)
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Nature is not "wise", and it is wrong to personify it
Yeah man she hates that!
Re:deserts move all the time (Score:4, Insightful)
Except it's usually the loopy lefty crunchy hippy types that actually most often anthropomorophize nature, assign it a personality, presume they know what it wants and how it should be, etc. You know it's true.
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Shooting them on sight is always an option.
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Says the group that anthropomorphizes a fictional being who's sole purpose is to prevent us from seeing his works while seeing his works.
Just call nature God and be done. they are one and the same anyways.
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Life as a whole survived, sure, but there were changes and extinctions, just as there are now. It's sustainable only in the way that everything is.
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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 ...
The late George Carlin described the above scenario as an Eden where man is a distant memory, and earth and styrofoam coexist happily.
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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.
It's hardly anthropomorphic to describe nature as self correcting? Really? That implies that there is something to correct, which implies ... . Not to mention describing some universal aspect of "Life" which the existence of an unbalanced humanity can "fuck up?" Sounds pretty anthropomorphized to me.
The crux of the matter seems to be, what do you mean by "self correcting?" I'm also unsure why you bring modern man into the equation. Surely you're aware of a multitude of previous mass extinctions? Surely you'
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When people describe nature as self-correcting, they aren't usually referring to any inherent right or wrong. What gets corrected is imbalance, such as restoring a predator-prey system to equilibrium. It seems to me that discussing natural equilibria doesn't have to involve intent, purpose, morals, or anything else that would make it anthropomorphic to say that nature is self-correcting.
Re:deserts move all the time (Score:5, Insightful)
Right, I understand that (and almost didn't say what I did, how I did..) but then again, what is balance in nature--what does that mean?
I don't think there is any (forgive the term) "natural" state which is the proper and balanced state. Everything in nature is constantly in flux. Sure, to use the common example of the predator-prey equilibrium, that is sometimes the case. Sometimes the predators go extinct, sometimes prey go extinct, sometimes they both do.
It seems to me that it's far easier to look at life on Earth through the lens of evolutionary bubbles and crashes. It only seems self correcting because we want to apply some kind of order to it, when it reality, that's just the way the universe works. When a forest fire burns, it burns everything it can, until it's burned too much and dies out. That seems about the same level of self correcting to me.
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Right, I understand that (and almost didn't say what I did, how I did..) but then again, what is balance in nature--what does that mean?
I think most people would consider "balance" as balanced in the favor of human habitation. As a species we are probably most interested in maintaining the organisms and ecosystems required for a comfortable human existence.
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It's hardly anthropomorphic to describe nature as self correcting? Really?
Yep. Just like when economists describe the free market as 'self-correcting', they don't mean there's a Big, All-Powerful Entity controlling it from the shadows, it's just that the system is such that minor changes will be met by opposite changes so that, overall, the system isn't affected on a large scale.
All some people are saying is, that like economies the 'self-correcting' system doesn't work as well for very large changes so when a single entity is far more greedy than it should, the entire system cou
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Re:deserts move all the time (Score:4, Insightful)
I sometimes wonder why there isn't more effort made to collect genetic material from endangered species.
I consider killing the last of a species similar to burning the very last copy(in any media) of a book. So much information lost.
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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.
Yeah, then those dinosaurs came along and fucked with the natural order, and look what happened to them.
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Blame the plants, not the dinosaurs.
They poisoned our planet with oxygen, and look what happened!
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Yeah, pesky humans, just because the desert ruins their crops and invades their village they feel the need to prevent it from doing so. Please people wise up and let Mother Nature in its infinite wisdom and consideration destroy all you have and ruin your life. For interfering with her might anger her.
Now if you'll excuse me I need to catch my plane to Holland, got some dams standing in the way of Mother Nature that need to be take care of.
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The truth is more that interfering with nature is fairly futile, and it would be wiser to live in concert with it instead of fighting it all the time. For instance, we have a huge problem with fires in California. The natives just lived in baskets and set them on fire every year; regular fire keeps the forest healthy. The Pomo people lived in this area for at least ten thousand years so obviously they were doing something right. Their population was a lot lower, but you can still have centralized farming. Y
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If the invading force listens to Bruce Lee, they'll be like water.
Re:deserts move all the time (Score:5, Insightful)
I'm a big fan of interfering.
Re:deserts move all the time (Score:4, Insightful)
why exactly are we to interfer with this process?
Because moving the farmers would require something approaching socialism, and not moving the farmers would require something appraching starvation.
Moving the desert is a better choice.
Re:deserts move all the time (Score:5, Funny)
Who the hell are you? Muad'Dib?
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Moving the desert is a better choice.
If the Mohammed will not go to the mountain, the mountain will come to Mohammed. Or, erm, something like that ;)
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Considering that the desertification of the Sahara will eventually stop, and recede, and turn the desert back into a temperate climate when the Earth's precession realigns it to what it was like several thousand years ago.
Re:deserts move all the time (Score:4, Funny)
why exactly are we to interfer with this process?
Gotta do SOMETHING with all that bacteria and sand.
Re:deserts move all the time (Score:4, Insightful)
Because we _caused_ the desert. Overpopulation, Overgrazing goats, digging for aquifers, using imported fertilizers, etc., helped destroy modest existing ecosystems that stabilized the soil and retained soil at the desert's border. Looked at over thousands of years of geological and archaelogical history, it seems clear that humans created or wildly expanded the deserts. There were amazing small areas that weren't overfarmed and avoided overpopulated, as experiments, and they showed up as remaining green and fertile as the desert grew right past them. It made the cause of desert growth quite clear.
Re:deserts move all the time (Score:4, Insightful)
Because we are the main responsible [wikipedia.org] for desertification.
I live in the south of Europe. It's highly likely that the Sahara crosses the Gibraltar Strait and comes knocking on my door. When that happens we'll all wish we have "interfered" more.
Up to the moment, the unbelievable stupidity (from politicians, companies and common people) in managing land goes to such an extent that makes me wonder if it's not intentional and there's a hidden conspiracy to turn my country into a desert.
Better start thinking about buying a camel.
Specifics (Score:5, Informative)
To be honest, the part which is more interesting is the fact that desertification will be stopped by using a wall. Sure, the Slashdot summary used bacteria as a hook, but in all honesty, the wall is more important than the bacteria anyway, which is why there's only a small mention of the bacteria in the source article.
Re:Specifics (Score:5, Interesting)
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:Specifics (Score:5, Funny)
Someone needs to genetically engineer a big desert worm.
Re:Specifics (Score:5, Funny)
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Someone needs to genetically engineer a big desert worm.
We know what happens when we drown a baby worm in water, I wonder what we'd get if we drowned it in tequila. Let's find out!
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Can it work to stop shore erosion or do the bacteria take too long to do their work; let alone could they withstand salt water?
How will a wall help ? (Score:4, Informative)
A main part of the problem is that sand storms blow so much sand on surrounding grasslands, it kills the plants and spreads the desert. I don't see how a wall could help, unless it was kilometers high. It would need to stop this [wikimedia.org] ?
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Where will they get the water from?
Re:How will a wall help ? (Score:4, Insightful)
Sandtrout and wind traps, duh.
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What second-generation Herberts? God, next you'll be telling me there's more than 6 Dune novels. HA! As if that could ever happen! Who'd write it? Frank Herbert's son and some worthless hack author? NO! It'll never happen!
(please don't ruin this for me)
Re:How will a wall help ? (Score:5, Insightful)
The vast majority of the sand is traveling very low to the ground. Sure, there's still a nice big dust cloud up high, but that big tall plume represents the least dense of the material, which is why it rises to the top.
You're essentially asking, "why have a sea wall if the very tops of the largest waves might still occasionally break over the top?"
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I'm personally wondering what would prevent this wall from just catalyzing the formation of a massive sand dune, which would eventually rise above the wall, effectively rendering the wall useless. Unlike the Ocean, once sand rises up against the wall it isn't going to flow back out later.
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Unlike the Ocean, once sand rises up against the wall it isn't going to flow back out later.
Unlike the ocean? Same thing happens there. Actually in some places walls are constructed along coastlines to trap sand for beach nourishment.
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Desert wall designed to stop sand, sea wall designed to stop ocean water. Waves will over-top a sea wall on occasion, but the water (what you're trying to keep out) doesn't stack up against the wall, it flows back out.
Wall designed to stop sand, as you said, catches sand. Eventually enough sand stacks up against the wall that sand is blown over the wall, making the wall useless.
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Well they have the same problem with desertification in China, where the Gobi and 2 other smaller deserts are growing. Beijing gets regular sandstorms now because of this. It seems like mountains and yes, the Great Wall of China, has little effect in preventing these.
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The great wall of China wasn't designed as a wind break. In fact it's in the worst possible location (right at the top of mountains), presenting the bare minimum of resistance to updraft airflow.
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The main trouble I see (IMHO all this post, by the way) is not by the sand that flies higher than the wall as for the sand that get stopped at the bottom of the wall. I'd think that the sand that accumulates there will progresively form a half-dune. Once this happens, one of two might be the end:
At the very least, the wall should be combined with other measures (growing plants
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The main trouble is that where you used to have low water use grasses, you now have high water use crops. The result drains the water supplies, and food animals like goats are raised on the grasses, and they eat _everything_. So the stabilizing grasses are gone, the ground can't retain water. So what used to be stable grasslands is turned into desert.
The same sort of thing happened in Oklahoma in the 1930's in the USA, called the 'Dust Bowl'. Look it up.
Re:How will a wall help ? (Score:4, Interesting)
This happens to me a lot (Score:2)
Re:de-certification (Score:2)
How the hell are you supposed to pronounce that bizarre word, anyway?
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>> How the hell are you supposed to pronounce that bizarre word, anyway?
I had the same though. It's either DESERT-ih-fih-KAY-shun, which... I dunno, just sounds wrong... Or, it's deh-ZERT-ih-fih-KAH-shun, but I think that would be spelled Dessertification - which is the transformation of food stuffs into dessert. Example:
"Overproduction of high fructose corn syrup by Big Food is responsible for the dessertification of American food, and Americans' resulting embiggenment."
Details (Score:5, Insightful)
The most information I could find is here [flickr.com] (the full-size images are pretty large) and here [blogspot.com].
It's hard to pick through the information, but is this scientifically viable? Or is this the random musings of an architecture student focusing only on the architecture side, and ignoring the biology side?
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The desert exists because of a climate shift; presumably you would need to change the conditions which cause desertification and frankly, I don't think that we could create a wall of enough size to change air currents sufficiently.
Re:Details (Score:4, Informative)
Actually, many scientists believe that the expansion of the Sahara desert is due to loss of vegetation due to over-grazing.
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is this the random musings of an architecture student focusing only on the architecture side, and ignoring the biology side?
I can't comment on the biology, but from a climate science perspective this is ridiculous. The designer has this vision of the Sahara as an endless sea of sand dunes, and thinks desertificaiton means the physical movement of these dunes to cover fertile areas. None of this is true.
This wall will do nothing to make it rain more in the Sahel, and it won't stop people from overgrazing o
And Here I Thought We Knew What to Do About Desert (Score:2)
You use irrigation techniques designed for low-water environments and strategically place human settlements in areas that you need planted. Plantings and irrigation anchor the soil and add more water to the system.
I know this is a scientific oversimplification, but I think it's been working well enough to shrink some of the Californian, Chinese, and Negev deserts.
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This is what to do with deserts [blogspot.com]. It's similar to your proposal, but solves two problems at once.
Dune Grass in the PNW (Score:2)
Re:Dune Grass in the PNW (Score:5, Funny)
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It's called "Bacterial cement" (Score:5, Informative)
Bacterial cement [discovermagazine.com] However bacteria need nutrient (urine base btw) to do it. It may happens simple concrete could actually be cheaper.
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Little googling revealed that bacteria could actually do it.
Beats the hell out of reading the article!
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However bacteria need nutrient (urine base btw) to do it.
So... you're saying pee on the sand dunes to make them grow? That's awesome!
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I use urine on my many compost heaps to get the process started. The bottles of yellow liquid I carry down the garden are not full of beer, as some may think.
Another pathetic attempt... (Score:3, Funny)
...by artists so full of themselves that they think can understand and harness something like stone-making bacteria. I know many of these types. They want to discuss ad nauseum every single scientific advancement and it's cultural implications, thinking that they can make some important contribution to the field. It's obvious these guys don't have a clue, as they think that an ice-nine scenario is something that, first nobody thought of, and second is even possible. These are the same people who hear about the LHC and think that there's a good chance that the universe might implode when they turn it on. As if the world works like it does in the politically motivated somewhat-sci-fi books that are all the rage in these circles.
Please, stay in the coffee shops in the village, discussing the importance of your latest pathetic attempt at relevance through putting mannequin arms in toilets bowls and calling it art.
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Please, stay in the coffee shops in the village, discussing the importance of your latest pathetic attempt at relevance through putting mannequin arms in toilets bowls and calling it art.
Problem is, they have the internets in those coffee shops. So they stay in their version of starbucks but with their macbooks and iphones, their attempts at proving that a little bit of knowledge can be the most ridiculous thing spread.
I propose we build a wall out of bacteria and myspace pages to stop the "artistification" of the internet.
Modern Art (Score:2)
relevance through putting mannequin arms in toilets bowls
Apply for a grant or other financial support from the Arts Council, or whatever your local tax-wasting equivalent is. That idea just might fly, if you write a bit more toad-screed around it...
Boring (Score:5, Funny)
Bacteria that stops decertification? (Score:3, Funny)
I would love to see that bacteria stop my CCNA from expiration.
Is there any desertification to stop though? (Score:2)
What is the evidence that there is any desertification? Where that is defined as deserts which are advancing, and whose advance is not containable by substitution of sustainable farming practices for unsustainable ones, such as over grazing by goats rather than mixed arable farming. That is, mixed crops and animal husbandry with attention to composting, manure and crop rotation.
There is no such evidence. All that is needed is sensible traditional mixed farming. And a lot less journalistic blather about
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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
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And outlawing goats. And reducing human population in the neighboring desert states to sustainable levels, particularly avoiding urban growth. And stable enough governments in these regions to maintan such policies.
I'm afraid that while it's technologically sustainable farming you're suggesting, politically it's impossible. The populations there are not wealthy enough and do not give enough rights to women to curbe the population growth.
What nonsense (Score:5, Funny)
Where do they expect to get enough sand to build a wall 6000 km long?
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Wall not sufficient (Score:2)
missing tag: (Score:2)
Uh (Score:2)
Does this sound uncomfortably like ice-nine to anyone else?
Re:A shield wall works great... (Score:5, Funny)
but you forgot... (Score:2)
The slow grain pierces the shield wall.
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That was a little too basic. In fact, it's SO basic, I'm not sure that qualifies as a question. I'll attempt to answer it anyway:
Algae!