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."

Comments

Re:deserts move all the time

[The Yuckinator]

It's what we do. We interfere with processes all the time.

I'm a big fan of interfering.

Re:deserts move all the time

[Sir_Lewk]

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.

Re:How will a wall help ?

[evilviper]

I don't see how a wall could help, unless it was kilometers high. It would need to stop this ?

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?"

Re:deserts move all the time

[Moridineas]

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.