About two kilometers from the Dead Sea and two from where Jesus was christened, in the country of Jordan, Geoff Lawton of the Permaculture Research Institute and his crew created a near miracle turning desert into a lush permaculture garden.

In August in this location, Lawton says that temperatures could rise above 50 degrees Celsius (122 degrees Fahrenheit). People farming there were farming under plastic strips and using tons of synthetic chemicals and fertilizers. The idea to grow a lush forest or garden of edible plants would probably make people laugh or roll their eyes. Nonetheless, the permaculture crew had exactly this vision in mind and a little funding to help them to do it.

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Ever imagine scenarios of possible futures based on different trajectories we seem to be on?

One such scenario is a Mad Max America in the 2200’s. The Southwest has succumbed to desertification from climate change. Peak oil peaked centuries ago. The US was too late to transition to the post oil age. What’s left of us compile hand-cranked vehicles from ancient industrial scraps.

To get around in the 23rd century, we would put together the kind of mutant makeshift creations you see at Burning Man. Simple tech vehicles for a Mad Max future.

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A recent post described the Desert Rhubarb, which uses large leaves, that lie flat on the ground to funnel whatever rain falls to its roots effectively increasing the rainfall. There are many other adaptions in deserts - this post looks at five, found in the Namib desert.

Flying Water to the Nest

The Namaqua Sandgrouse (Pterocles namaqua) needs to spend much of its life in a highly organised quest for water and food. This can involve a daily round trip of more than 80 kilometres (50 miles). The daily activity starts just after sunrise when small flocks of Namaqua Sandgrouse from different areas congregate at favoured waterholes.

The Sandgrouse lays two to three eggs in a nest that is a mere scrape in the ground between tufts of grass. To get water to their newly hatched young, the male dips his breast feathers under the surface of the waterhole and allows them to absorb water like a sponge, absorbing up to 8 times their weight in water. With his cargo complete, he flies back to the chicks, and they drink the water directly from his breast feathers.

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Desert Rhubarb (Rheum palaestinum) grows in Israel and Syria, but was studied in the Negev desert by the University of Haifa. Desert Rhubarb is a perennial hemicryptophyte, that grows during the rainy winter in mountainous desert areas where the average annual rainfall is only 75 mm (just under 3 inches).

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I took this photo in the meat section of my neighborhood grocery store earlier this week.

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My favorite Bayview corner sandwich shop, Upper Crust Deli on Third Street in San Francisco, has just started carrying fresh seasonal produce. They are now selling a variety of melons, potatoes, apples, bananas and many other healthy fruit and vegetable options.

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Would you like a stroke with your cheeseburger? Scientists have found that your chances of having a stroke may actually be related to how many Burger Kings and KFCs are operating in your town. Researchers at the University of Michigan have discovered that the risk of stroke increases with the preponderance of fast-food restaurants in a neighborhood.

In the recently published study, Texas residents with the highest number of fast-food restaurants had a 13% higher relative risk of suffering strokes than those living in areas with the lowest number of restaurants. Each additional McDonalds, Jack in the Box or Taco Bell also increased the risk of stroke by 1%.

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Experts say only a fraction of the Sahara, probably the size of a small country, would need to be covered to produce enough energy to supply the whole of Europe. Written by David Adam at the Guardian.

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In the Sahara, life hangs in the balance. As nomadic lifestyles vanish, urbanization threatens one of the desert’s last elephant populations. Conservationists must work fast to quell human-elephant conflict in the most arid habitat on Earth.

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“I started to see two Americas: the mythic America and the real America. There was a harsh reality to America as well as the dream. I wanted to describe this era of prosperity and Savings and Loans scandals as a spiritual drought. I started thinking about the desert.” - Bono, from the rock band, U2

There’s “a place, high on a desert plain, where the streets have no name,” a place marked by bizarre rock outcroppings and the almost magical forests of the crooked and spiky Joshua trees — a metaphor U2 adeptly used for America’s prosperity and greed of the 80s, as relevant then, as it is today. In December of 1986, the four members of U2 and photographer Anton Corbijn captured the rocky and mountainous terrain and a lonely Joshua tree, summoning us with their The Joshua Tree to call upon our inner spirit to come together for peace, harmony, and love.

Here we are today, more than twenty years later, where such a commitment for change is never more needed. Perhaps a little time in the desert might clear my mind, settle my soul, I thought. Perhaps I can muster the strength we need to move toward a more sustainable and just tomorrow. Located 140 miles east of Los Angeles and just north of Palm Springs and west of Death Valley, the 792,726-acre Joshua Tree National Park provides an escape from urban pressures, a place to experience solitude and wilderness, to reconnect with our hopes and dreams.

The photogenic Joshua trees are neither tree nor cactus; they’re a giant version of a species of yucca, belonging to the lily family, many living for hundreds of years.  Unfortunately, if the U.S. Geological Survey scientists are correct in their modeling, the Joshua trees may not be around in fifty to a hundred years from now thanks to climate change altering the fragile desert ecosystem, average temperatures, and precipitation patterns. The trees they need cool winters and freezing temperatures in order to produce flowers, release their seeds, and reproduce.

To experience the park, my family and I meandered but a few of the 191 miles of hiking trails for our own spiritual walkabout roughly the same time as President-elect Barack Obama was sworn into office. The desert foray was a dramatic ecotourism adventure — a safe one, so long as you bring lots of water with you.  There are also four visitor centers positioned to help guide your enjoyment of the park, depending on where you enter it. Many argue that the best time to visit is during the spring bloom of wildflowers and other plants.

My bet is that U2 never anticipated the global impacts of climate change, now calling into question the long term survival of the namesake Joshua Trees in the Joshua Tree National Park. That Joshua tree made famous by U2 is gone. Others will likely follow.  Besides climate change, invasive exotic species, increasing incidence of wildfires, and nitrogen deposition originating from emissions hundreds of miles away in Los Angeles are also impacting the trees, according to Alice Miller who is involved with on-going research in the park.  “There is no single cause of their decline,” says Miller.  “Everything is interconnected.”

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We predicted that the translocation of tortoises from Fort Irwin’s expansion would be disastrous, and unfortunately, we were proven right. The loss of so many tortoises is certainly not helping this threatened population. The Army must minimize the death rate. If relocation really is necessary, it needs to be done much more carefully.

Image: USGS

Via: World-Wire
Image: Whymcycles

Good old American ingenuity would not be dead.
Image: David Cushing

Pedal power would be our primary means of transportation.
Image: Whymcycles

We would remember the good ol’ days of the 20th century SUV, nostalgically making new ones to run on just human power.

Image: Whymcycles

Even quite large vehicles could be hand-rolled across our encroaching deserts, moving toddlers and the ancient along comfortably in a Ferris Wheel type of arrangement like this design from the 2009 Burning Man.

Image:  Princess Diablo

Improvising ways to keep off the sun would be important, while staying cool. Textile production was possible in ancient Egypt, so we’d find the old ways again.
Image: Flikr user Princess Diablo

But all would not be gritty and serious. We would commemorate species that had become extinct in the 20th and 21st centuries; in whimsical designs like this.
Image: Waldemar Horwa

We might surprise our 21st century selves with our ingenuity in making such low tech scraped-together contraptions. Using simple techniques they might even be able to…
Image: Waldemar Horwa

…light up at night.
Image: Avi Ostfeld

My favorite would be this one. The elegant proportions are so reminiscent of that ancient 21st century French EV - Venturi’s Eclectic.  The first off-the-drawing-board version. You remember it.

Source: Flikr Burning Man Mutant Vehicles

Similarly, I do not think it is a hard proposition to imagine that Africa’s actual solar generation is miniscule, compared to the rest of the planet.

But rather than trying to focus blame within Africa, I think the blame must, as it does with much of the anthropogenic global warming, be laid at the feet of western nations for not doing more for Africa. Because while Africa may see the Sun create an average of 5 to 7 kilowatts per hour for every square meter across its surface, the money is simply not there for governments to spend on solar technology.

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Fifty percent of the country’s water is sourced from the wells and only ten percent of the population is able to survive on rainwater alone. The groundwater level has decreased by 1.5 feet annually for the past 15 years, and with little rain and increased water use for Iran’s growing population, the aquifers have had no chance to refill. As a result, some areas have been sinking up to 20 inches a year.

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Amongst European nations, Spain stands to suffer more than most from the effects of climate change and global warming, with nearly a third of the nation’s roughly 200,000 square miles threatened with a “significant risk” of desertification. In direct response to the threat, the government will invest around 90 million Euros as part of the reforestation drive.

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–Sting

“The desert is in full bloom! You just have to go see it!” I’ve been hearing too much of this for a few weeks now, from my chronically infected wanderlust stricken neighbors, who are simply unable to spend even a single weekend here in our quaint, green suburban Ra’anana. “Sure”, I thought, “You mean you think that I too should drive for hours and hours to the middle of a barren no-place just to see a couple of small bushes with three tiny wilted greenish white petals stuck to them. Yeah, right.”

But my wife, naive and easily convinced as she is, packed up our day pack, delicately but forcibly packed me into the driver’s seat and made me drive about an hour and a half southwards, on one of Israel’s most boring stretches of asphalt wastelands, to see for ourselves what all the fuss is about. When we neared the borderhills of the Northern Negev desert, I realized we were in for a vast surprise. Instead of the dry, dusty gray middle-eastern desert that I had expected, what came into view was more like Province, France, in the height of spring! Wherever you looked, wild poppies had painted hills brilliant red and abundant uncultivated yellow Daisies had decorated the rolling wadi-sides with expansive blotches of bright yellow. I’ve seen a few deserts in my life, but this was more like a sub-tropical paradise than a desert!

The Negev desert, in southern Israel, is an arid region at the northeastern edge of the large Saharo-Arabian desert belt, which extends from the African Atlantic seaboard on the west, across the Arabian Desert eastwards, all the way to the Sind in India. The fairly small Negev is in fact one of the least dry deserts in the world, as it gets plenty of moist air, thanks to its proximity to the Mediterranean Sea. This allows for a wealth of human activity in the desert. In modern days, eco-tourism is a biggie, but so is desert agriculture. Just beyond the blossoming reserve that we were exploring were vast expanses of cultivated plots ripe with potatoes, open fields of winter wheat, just beginning to turn from green to golden and greenhouses sheltering juicy organic winter tomatoes nearly bursting on their vines, being picked for sale in Europe and other for international markets – all growing on reclaimed desert lands.

Not all world deserts have it this well off. In fact, desertification is one of the biggest environmental problems the world has, and it’s getting worse all the time. The UN Convention to Combat Desertification (UNCCD) defines desertification as: "land degradation in arid, semiarid and subhumid tropics caused by a combination of climatic factors and human activities." Drylands are fragile ecosystems, and desert environments depend on a delicate balance of soil, wind and humidity. Human over-exploitation can and does lead to encroachment and expansion of these deserts. Desertification is not only a land issue: Soil erosion from damaged lands causes siltation, which destroys river and sea habitats. For example, coral reefs of Caribbean Islands and elsewhere have been identified as being ruined by shifting sand.

Don’t think that if you live far away from the nearest desert that desertification does not influence you directly. Global politics and economics play a role too: farm subsidies in the developed world push crop prices down in developing agricultural dryland areas which in turn forces poor farmers and countries to spend less and less on managing and maintaining the delicate balance of land usage. Also, as demand for (cheap) goods rise in the industrialized world, developing nations strive to increase outputs by bringing marginal land areas into production, again increasing desertification. The problem is so pronounced, that UNEP estimates around 10-20% of the world’s dryland – about 8-10Mllion sq kilometers, an area the size of Canada, China or Brazil – already degraded. In China alone the arable land and the homelands of nearly 400 million people are threatened by desertification. UNEP selected the problem of desertification for last year’s “World Environment Day” theme. You can learn more about the scope of desertification and related facts here.

In conjunction with international experts and the UNCCD, Israel’s Blaustein Institute for Desert Studies recently held the “Deserts and Desertification - Challenges and Opportunities” conference at Sde Boker, located in the Negev desert. The Institute routinely hosts students from around the world who come to get graduate degrees in Desert Studies, researching desert related topics from climate-sensitive agriculture to desertification remediation and drylands management.

One lesson learned from recent Israeli history is that desertification is not irreversible destiny. When soil conservation, irrigation and sustainable desert agriculture and forestry become national priority, trends can be changed. The Negev desert, accounts for over half of this tiny country’s area. The Negev, especially the northern part, had been a highly productive region during various periods of ancient history. Over time, it had turned into a wasteland, due to overgrazing, deforestation and poor soil stewardship. Indeed, when the modern State of Israel was founded, in 1948, the Negev desert extended as far north as Gedera, today a southern suburb of Tel Aviv. The equilibrium that allowed for a flourishing desert life in the past had been lost for many centuries. In recent years, Israelis have relearned how to live in harmony with their arid environment. National projects were set into motion to revive the desert heritage. During the 1950s, water infrastructure projects were built to deliver water from the rainy north to the desiccated south. Newly established desert settlements invented and then implemented drip irrigation technologies (now used around the world), allowing local agricultural economies to grow while conserving precious water resources. Trees were planted trees on dry and salty lands, where common forestry knowledge thought it to be impossible. Policy makers introduced organized grazing, and enforcers maintained seasonal allocations to ensure that the land's capacity was not exceeded.

So, next time your wife offers to take a trip to see your local desert in full bloom, accept her offer gratefully. With a third of the world’s land being degraded drylands, one can easily appreciate a shade-blessed desert Acacia tree, a seasonally flooded riverbed and a flowering green desert hill.

Image: Whymcycles

Good old American ingenuity would not be dead.
Image: David Cushing

Pedal power would be our primary means of transportation.
Image: Whymcycles

We would remember the good ol’ days of the 20th century SUV, nostalgically making new ones to run on just human power.

Image: Whymcycles

Even quite large vehicles could be hand-rolled across our encroaching deserts, moving toddlers and the ancient along comfortably in a Ferris Wheel type of arrangement like this design from the 2009 Burning Man.

Image:  Princess Diablo

Improvising ways to keep off the sun would be important, while staying cool. Textile production was possible in ancient Egypt, so we’d find the old ways again.
Image: Flikr user Princess Diablo

But all would not be gritty and serious. We would commemorate species that had become extinct in the 20th and 21st centuries; in whimsical designs like this.
Image: Waldemar Horwa

We might surprise our 21st century selves with our ingenuity in making such low tech scraped-together contraptions. Using simple techniques they might even be able to…
Image: Waldemar Horwa

…light up at night.
Image: Avi Ostfeld

My favorite would be this one. The elegant proportions are so reminiscent of that ancient 21st century French EV - Venturi’s Eclectic.  The first off-the-drawing-board version. You remember it.

Source: Flikr Burning Man Mutant Vehicles