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Greening the Desert with Permaculture
GREENING THE DESERT WITH PERMACULTURE
“I have never seen soil like this before” was the comment that Bill Mollison made during a visit to the Greening the Desert Project in 2011. At the time, he was referring to the poor state of the soil in the small village of Jawasari, Jordan. An area of the world where the landscape has been damaged by not only extreme pollution and the overuse of recycling nutrients but also by the climatic conditions of the location. At 31° North of the equator, 400-meters below sea level, in an area that receives less than 50-millimeters (2-inches) in annual rainfall, and Summer temperatures reaching over 50°C (122°F), the Dead Sea Valley is considered one of the world’s worst agricultural scenarios.
So, when I and thousands like me first saw the Greening the Desert video, we thought, if this is possible in one of the lowest, driest, and harshest environments in the world then we can do this—grow food, harvest water, repair soil, enhance the ecosystem and build community—anywhere in the world. The solution has been found, and it’s merely adopting the same design methods, the persistence, and the passion.
Growing up in Jordan I have seen agricultural land being encroached on. The neighborhood I grew up in slowly turned from fertile farming land, growing grains and vegetables, into a residential apartment block that was everything you would expect from a concrete forest. I witnessed small farmers struggling to stay profitable, and confessing to losing their land to salt due to commercial planting methods, the advice they get from agriculture departments, chemical fertilizer salesmen and the lack of long-sightedness in the agriculture policy in Jordan overall.
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Oasis at Risk: Oman’s Ancient Water Channels Are Drying Up
Oasis at Risk: Oman’s Ancient Water Channels Are Drying Up
Since pre-Islamic times, Oman’s water systems known as aflaj have brought water from the mountains and made the desert bloom. But now, unregulated pumping of groundwater is depleting aquifers and causing the long-reliable channels to run dry.
It was 47 degrees Celsius. Make that 117 degrees Fahrenheit. In mid-May, the desert of northern Oman may have been the hottest place on the planet. But in the shade of the oasis, the temperature was dramatically cooler. Ali Al Muharbi, in his white robes and beard, beamed as he showed me around the date palms. All were irrigated by water gurgling down a channel dug many centuries ago to tap underground water in the nearby Hajar mountains.
In Oman, a country on the shores of the Arabian Sea, these magical waters conjured from the most arid land imaginable are called “unfailing springs.”
Even in the worst droughts, flows persist down the underground tunnels to the surface channels that course through the villages and fields. These pre-Islamic feats of hydraulic engineering remain the only water supply for many villages. Even large towns owe their existence to the perpetually flowing waters. The systems, which remain independent of the state and are run entirely by village communities, are known individually as falaj, and collectively by the plural aflaj.
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How Many People Will Have To Migrate Out Of California When All The Water Disappears?
How Many People Will Have To Migrate Out Of California When All The Water Disappears?
The drought in California is getting a lot worse. As you read this, snowpack levels in the Sierra Nevada mountains are the lowest that have ever been recorded. That means that there won’t be much water for California farmers and California cities once again this year. To make up the difference in recent years, water has been pumped out of the ground like crazy. In fact, California has been losing more than 12 million acre-feet of groundwater a year since 2011, and wells all over the state are going dry. Once the groundwater is all gone, what are people going to do? 100 years ago, the population of the state of California was 3 million, and during the 20th century we built lots of beautiful new cities in an area that was previously a desert. Scientists tell us that the 20th century was the wettest century in 1000 years for that area of the country, but now weather patterns are reverting back to normal. Today, the state of California is turning back into a desert but it now has a population of 38 million people. This is not sustainable in the long-term. So when the water runs out, where are they going to go?
I have written quite a few articles about the horrific drought in California, but conditions just continue to get even worse. According to NPR, snowpack levels in the Sierra Nevada mountains are “just 6 percent of the long-term average”…
The water outlook in drought-racked California just got a lot worse: Snowpack levels across the entire Sierra Nevada are now the lowest in recorded history — just 6 percent of the long-term average. That shatters the previous low record on this date of 25 percent, set in 1977 and again last year.
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California Is Turning Back Into A Desert And There Are No Contingency Plans
California Is Turning Back Into A Desert And There Are No Contingency Plans
Once upon a time, much of the state of California was a barren desert. And now, thanks to the worst drought in modern American history, much of the state is turning back into one. Scientists tell us that the 20th century was the wettest century that the state of California had seen in 1000 years. But now weather patterns are reverting back to historical norms, and California is rapidly running out of water. It is being reported that the state only has approximately a one year supply of water left in the reservoirs, and when the water is all gone there are no contingency plans. Back in early 2014, California Governor Jerry Brown declared a drought emergency for the entire state, but since that time water usage has only dropped by 9 percent. That is not nearly enough. The state of California has been losing more than 12 million acre-feet of total water a year since 2011, and we are quickly heading toward an extremely painful water crisis unlike anything that any of us have ever seen before.
But don’t take my word for it. According to the Los Angeles Times, Jay Famiglietti “is the senior water scientist at the NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory/Caltech and a professor of Earth system science at UC Irvine”. What he has to say about the horrific drought in California is extremely sobering…
As our “wet” season draws to a close, it is clear that the paltry rain and snowfall have done almost nothing to alleviate epic drought conditions.January was the driest in California since record-keeping began in 1895. Groundwater and snowpack levels are at all-time lows. We’re not just up a creek without a paddle in California, we’re losing the creek too.
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Ancient landscapes point to dramatic climate change
Ancient landscapes point to dramatic climate change
Scientists believe Chinese civilisation could have been founded by climate refugees after the collapse of an Inner Mongolian culture over 4,000 years ago.
LONDON, 26 February, 2015 − Chinese and US scientists have uncovered prehistoric evidence of mass migration triggered by climate change.
Something occurred 4,200 years ago – a collapse of the monsoon system, the sapping of the groundwater, the sudden drainage of a lake – that brought a Neolithic culture to an end and left nothing but sandy landscapes in China’s Inner Mongolia region.
Archaeological evidence has revealed the jade carvings that once marked the Hongshan culture, along with evidence of hunting, fishing and even commercial traffic with Mongolian shepherds. And then the artefacts stop.
There is a 600-year period marked by no evidence of human settlement at all. Where there had once been streams, lakes grassland and forest, and a flourishing new Stone Age culture, only shifting sand dunes remained.
Recent origin
Xiaoping Yang, professor in the Institute of Geology and Geophysics at the Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, and research colleagues from China, New Mexico, Hawaii and Texas report in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences that they used a new laboratory technique to show that the northern Chinese deserts were not – as many had thought – millions of years old.
Instead, they are of very recent origin, and the researchers found evidence of dramatic change during human settlement.
In addition, the exploration of artefacts in the region – and the discovery, among other things, of a jade object that might be a dragon − now suggests that Chinese culture and identity may have its origins in the far north, rather than in the Yellow River basin, which has been the archaeologists’ working hypothesis until now.
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