Desertification

“ Desertification – the process whereby productive arid and semi-arid land is rendered economically unproductive – and large-scale deforestation are other examples of major threats to the integrity of regional ecosystems. ”

“ International disputes: boundary with Senegal in dispute
Climate: desert; constantly hot, dry, dusty
Terrain: mostly barren, flat plains of the Sahara; some central hills
Natural resources: iron ore, gypsum, fish, copper, phosphate
Land use: arable land: 1% permanent crops: 0% meadows and pastures: 38% forest and woodland: 5% other: 56%
Irrigated land: 120 sq km (1989 est.)
Environment:
current issues: overgrazing, deforestation, and soil erosion
aggravated by drought are contributing to desertification ”

“ Irrigated land:
23,860 sq km (1998 est.)
Natural hazards:
damaging earthquakes occur in Hindu Kush mountains; flooding;
droughts
Environment - current issues:
limited natural fresh water resources; inadequate supplies of
potable water; soil degradation; overgrazing; deforestation (much of
the remaining forests are being cut down for fuel and building
materials) ; desertification ”

“ The sun poured down on the plain as on the desert, and indeed it is like a desert in its desolate character. The soil is fertile, and yet it produces little, simply for want of irrigation, while on the border of the plain is a river which might be made to overflow it as the Nile overflows the valley of Egypt. The Doctor, who has a quick eye for utilizing natural resources, immediately had a plan for reclaiming this waste, and explained how, by the use of an American invention, the swift-rushing Jordan could be made to lift itself up in volume sufficient to water the whole plain. ”

“ The Nubian desert, from Korosko to Abou Hamed, would become a garden, the whole of that sterile country inclosed within the great western bend of the Nile towards Dongola would be embraced in the system of irrigation, and the barren sands that now give birth to the bitter melon of the desert (Cucumis colocynthis) , would bring forth the water-melon, and heavy crops of grain.* The great Sahara is desert, simply because it receives no rainfall: give it only water, and the sand will combine with the richer soil beneath, and become productive. ”

“ Desert fringes often are a mosaic of microclimates. Small hollows support vegetation that picks up heat from the hot winds and protects the land from the prevailing winds. After rainfall the vegetated areas are distinctly cooler than the surroundings. In these marginal areas, human activity may stress the ecosystem beyond its tolerance limit, resulting in degradation of the land. By pounding the soil with their hooves, livestock compact the substrate, increase the proportion of fine material, and reduce the percolation rate of the soil, thus encouraging erosion by wind and water. ”

“ Hence these deserts, that at first seem to be a disadvantage to the land, are the great conditions of its climate, and are of far more value than if they were like the prairies of Illinois. Fortunately they will remain deserts forever. Some parts will in time be reclaimed by the waters of the Colorado River, but wet spots of a few hundred thousand acres would be too trifling to affect general results, for millions of acres of burning desert would forever defy all attempts at irrigation or settlement. ”

“ If the Arab camps, with his flocks and herds, in some green spot beside a spring, yet it is only for a few days, for in that time his sheep and cattle have consumed the scanty herbage, and he must move on to some new resting-place. Thus the life of the desert is a life always in motion. The desert has no settled population, no towns or villages, where men are born, and grow up, and live and die. Its only "inhabitants" are "strangers and pilgrims," that come alone or in caravans, and pitch their tents, and tarry for a night, and are gone. ”

“ The irrigation and development of deserts by means of artesian wells and by streams brought from a distance, followed by the construction of roads, settlement and cultivation are being vigorously prosecuted in all parts where the climate is not too cold. Large tracts notably in the Sahara and Gobi deserts and in Arabia and Tartary, have already been made productive and populous. This power can be conveyed to great distances from the point where it is developed, and made to do work in places practically inaccessible to any other form of power. ”

“ When the highlands of the Mediterranean peninsulas had been deprived of their woods the general failing of springs turned rivers into shallow brooks, and brook-valleys into arid ravines. Summer rains became too scarce to support the vegetation of the farm lands; the tillers of the soil had to resort to irrigation and eat their bread in a harder and ever harder struggle for existence, till vast areas of once fertile lands had to be entirely abandoned, and the arable territory of this planet was yearly reduced by the growth of an artificial desert. ”

“ If the heat falling on a few square yards of mirror lifts nearly 100,000 gallons of water an hour, there is indeed hope for the Sahara, the Persian Desert, Arabia, Mongolia, Mexico, Australia. That is to say, if the water under the earth be in these parts as plentiful as the sunshine above it. The effect of water on the most unpromising soil is marvellous. Already in Algeria the French have reclaimed thousands of square miles by scientific irrigation. In Australia huge artesian wells have made habitable for man and beast millions of acres that were before desert. ”

“ It is often said that America has no real deserts. This is true in the sense that there are no [Pg 227] regions such as are found in Asia and Africa where one can travel a hundred miles at a stretch and scarcely see a sign of vegetation—nothing but barren gravel, graceful, wavy sand dunes, hard, wind-swept clay, or still harder rock salt broken into rough blocks with upturned edges. In the broader sense of the term, however, America has an abundance of deserts—regions which bear a thin cover of bushy vegetation but are too dry for agriculture without irrigation.... ”

“ For all time they have stood as over-masters of the Great Desert. Proudly they overlook the far-flung wastes beneath them, where foot-hills die out among black, stony, boulder-strewn plains, and “lakes” of sand, relieved, here and there, by odd-shaped pill-box or church-like kopjes that stand as miniature guardians of the mountains behind them—beyond, right to the faint horizon, nothing but the great dead plains of the desert. ”

“ In some areas, nomads moving to less arid areas disrupt the local ecosystem and increase the rate of erosion of the land. Nomads are trying to escape the desert, but because of their land-use practices, they are bringing the desert with them. ”

“ Its situation between the desert on the north and the mountains which border it on the south, with a climate destructive to foreigners, and a lawless and predatory population, make it one of the most inaccessible regions in the world. ”

“ The lowlands and the lower mountains, especially southward, are generally treeless. Cottonwoods line the streams, salt-loving vegetation margins the bare playas, low bushes and scattered bunch-grass grow over the lowlands, especially in the north. Gray desert plants, notably cactuses and other thorny plants, partly replace in the south the bushes of the north. Except on the scattered oases, where irrigation from springs and mountain streams has reclaimed small patches, the desert is barren and forbidding in the extreme. ”

“ Then, whenever the wind blew, the sand was carried along and began to cover up the houses and temples. The people had moved away because their food would not grow, and soon the sand completely covered the old cities. For a long time they were buried, until some Europeans went to see what they could find out about the people who lived there long ago. Then they dug and dug in the sand, and found the old houses and temples. But digging in the desert is very hard work, because it is very hot, and there is very little water and food. Often, too, a great wind arises and brings a sandstorm. ”

“ The Desert of Erosion is not completely inhabited. At intervals you meet with a few squalid villages, and a multitude of camel’s-skin tents are scattered like black spots over the yellow or grayish plains, on the borders of the chotts or scanty water-courses. Herds of goats and flocks of sheep wander in the valleys, browsing on the rare short grass. Columns of smoke arise from the Arab bivouacs, and the women of the Sahara group themselves around the wells and springs to fill the water-bags with which they load their asses. ”

“ The Arabs pay little attention to marching in order, and in a straight line, so that the camels traverse double the quantity of ground that there would be any occasion for did they attend to plain common sense. The Desert now showed more signs of cultivation, and, indeed, a great portion of this so-called Desert is only land uncultivated, but capable of the highest degree of cultivation;—all which might be effected by supplying any scarcity of rain by irrigation. ”

“ Around this desert rise the mountains, some old and nearly worn down, their tops barely rising out of the long slopes of sand and gravel; others rugged and steep, lifting their crests far above the burning desert into the cold, clear sky.
Curious forms of plants and animals find their homes upon the slopes about the basin, where they adapt themselves to the heat and dryness. But toward the centre the soil is bare clay, for when the water dried up so much alkali and salt were left that nothing could grow. ”

“ This was the Great American Desert, the irreclaimable waste of fifty years ago, the dread-spot of the continent. To-day you may seek it in vain.
When reduced to its essence, the work of every great explorer and pioneer in the West has consisted in showing that the desert was no desert. It was a cramped and mendicant imagination and a weak faith in humanity that first called it a desert, and it has required the life of many a bold man to dispel that error. The pioneer cow-man came in and saw the dry bunch-grass of the plains. ”

“ THE intense heat and dryness, with the resulting great evaporation, combined with the almost total absence of rain, and the cutting action of the sand, when driven by the furious desert gales, makes the existence of vegetation in the desert almost an impossibility. ”

“ Bursting, it would send torrents roaring down every ravine, wash out weathered masses of earth, sweep all before it as it gathered forces and rushed out on the desert, leaving the main cañons carved a little richer, the surface of the soil on the sink a little deeper, against the time when men should control these storm waters or bring the precious fluid up from underground reservoirs and make the desert blossom like the rose. ”

“ For more than fifteen hundred miles the ever-lessening river rolls on between bare desert hills and spreads fertility over the deep valley in their midst—just as far as its own mud sheet can cover the barren rocky bottom, and no farther. For the most part the line of demarcation between the grey bare desert and the cultivable plain is as clear and as well-defined as the margin of sea and land: you can stand with one foot on the barren rock and one on the green soil of the tilled and irrigated mud-land. ”

“ We need harbor no such envyings, for in the conquest of the nonirrigated and nonirrigable desert are offered as fine opportunities as the world has known to the makers and shakers of empires. We stand before an undiscovered land; through the restless, ascending currents of heated desert air the vision comes and goes. With striving eyes the desert is seen covered with blossoming fields, with churches and homes and schools, and, in the distance, with the vision is heard the laughter of happy children. ”

“ Beyond commences the wide sandy desert, stretching westward to the base of the Rocky Mountains. We have little apprehension of giving too unfavourable an account of this portion of the country. Though the soil is in some places fertile, the want of timber, of navigable streams, and of water for the necessities of life, render it an unfit residence for any but a nomade population. ”

“ During most of these times, deserts have grown and shrunk independent of human activities. Paleodeserts, large sand seas now inactive because they are stabilized by vegetation, extend well beyond the present margins of core deserts, such as the Sahara. In some regions, deserts are separated sharply from surrounding, less arid areas by mountains and other contrasting landforms that reflect basic structural differences in the regional geology. In other areas, desert fringes form a gradual transition from a dry to a more humid environment, making it more difficult to define the desert border. ”

“ As other settlers poured into the West the problem of the desert was attacked with a will, some of them replying to the commiseration of Eastern farmers by saying that it was easier to scoop out an irrigation ditch than to cut forests and wrestle with stumps and stones. ”

“ It was a curious and happy coincidence that onr arrival upon the limits of the desert should have been celebrated by the first shower of rain: we no longer travelled upon sand and stones, but we stood upon a fertile loam, rendered soapy and adhesive by the recent shower. The country was utterly barren at that season, as the extreme heat of the sun and simoom destroys all vegetation so thoroughly that it becomes as crisp as glass; the dried grass breaks in the wind, and is carried away in dust, leaving the earth so utterly naked and bare that it is rendered a complete desert. ”