The Earth is a rocky planet, 71% of the surface area is not ocean, 29% of the area is land. A large number of living things, including humans, live on land, and 29% of the land cannot be fully utilized by humans. The reason is that another third of the deserts cannot adapt to human habitation and survival.
The desert is a beautiful landscape in the earth’s ecological environment. If a friend has traveled to the desert, then you will understand how desolate it is. The desert is constantly devouring the landing ground, constantly squeezing the survival of human beings, so many people are thinking: when will all the deserts on the earth be controlled and turn them into oasis.
If all the deserts are turned into oasis, then humans will have a lot of land and a lot of living space, which is of great benefit to alleviating the problem of human habitation. Can the desert be cleaned up? Some people may say that human science and technology continue to grow stronger, and it will become easier and easier to transform the desert.
In fact, many people have a misunderstanding about deserts, believing that deserts are the result of human activities. They are caused by humans’ uncontrolled destruction and grazing, which have turned a large number of oases into deserts. If you think so, you are wrong. In fact, deserts existed on the earth before humans appeared.
The history of deserts is very long, it may be tens of millions of years, it may be hundreds of millions of years. There are also many reasons for the formation of deserts. The most important thing is that the local rainfall is small and the evaporation is large, so that the water in the rocks and soil is getting less and less. Under the action of the wind, the rocks continue to break down into smaller and smaller sands.
After the rocks are broken down into sand, they will blow further away under the action of the wind, continuously desertifying the surrounding area, and finally accumulating sand into deserts, forming huge desert landscapes. At present, the largest deserts in the world are mainly formed by natural ecological reasons, not caused by human activities.
For this kind of naturally formed desert, it is impossible to transform with the current human power, and what we can transform is actually a desert formed by human factors. For example, the Mu Us Desert is the famous Pearl of Saibei in the history of our country. It is an oasis with fertile aquatic plants and flocks of cattle and sheep.
Due to human internal wars, deforestation, overgrazing and other reasons, the soil here gradually degraded, leading to desertification, and the Mu Us Desert was formed step by step. The desert caused by human factors, because it is not formed naturally, the desert itself also has some advantages of once oasis. For example, the natural environment of the Mu Us Desert is not particularly harsh, and the desert is not completely without water.
Such deserts can be transformed by planting trees and afforestation. Through the efforts of recent decades, the land management rate of the Mu Us Desert has reached over 80%, and more than 6 million acres of land have been restored to the original green scenery. This is a positive signal, telling us: “The desert can be wiped out by manpower.”
Of course, this statement is not entirely correct. What we can hope to eliminate is the desert caused by human factors. This type of desert used to be an oasis, but the desert was formed due to the excessive destruction of human beings, so the innate ecological advantages still exist here. As long as they are properly managed, they can restore the appearance of the past oasis.
But those naturally formed deserts, such as the Sahara Desert in Africa, have an area of 9 million square kilometers. The formation of such a vast Sahara Desert has nothing to do with human beings. It is mainly due to its location near the Tropic of Cancer. It is controlled by subtropical high pressure throughout the year. As a result, there are few clouds in the weather and very little rainfall. There will not be a single drop of rain for ten years, so a vast desert has been formed.
The Taklimakan Desert in my country is also a desert formed due to topography and natural environmental factors. It has nothing to do with human activities. For these deserts, it is difficult to successfully manage these deserts through simple tree planting and afforestation. Does that mean that in the future, humans will not be able to manage the naturally formed deserts?
Of course not. The power of science and technology is infinite. Naturally formed deserts are formed due to natural environmental factors. As long as we have the ability to change the natural environment of the desert, then desert governance can be successful. To do this, we need stronger scientific and technological strength, and we need to be able to use technology to change the natural environment.
In fact, as long as human beings can upgrade to a first-class civilization, then changing the desert environment can be done. At that time, we can turn all the deserts on the earth into oasis. There may be many friends who think that turning the desert into an oasis is a great thing for mankind. Is this really the case?
I am afraid that the result will not be as beautiful as we imagined. As a part of the earth’s ecological environment, deserts have existed for a very long time. The formation of the earth’s ecological environment is the result of a combination of various factors. A mountain, a river, and every existence on the earth has its own function, and there is nothing completely useless.
The desert has a very large area on the earth, and it naturally participates in the evolution of the earth’s ecological environment. If we clean up all the deserts and turn them into oasis, then the balance of the earth’s ecological environment will inevitably be broken, and the cost will be unbearable for us.
Desert is part of the ecosystem. It plays an important role in the stability of the entire ecosystem. First of all, many creatures need to rely on the desert to survive. If the desert is lost, these creatures will go extinct. Secondly, deserts play an important role in the circulation of water and air in the ocean and land. Many people may not understand this. Let’s give a brief introduction.
We all know that the ocean occupies 71% of the earth’s surface, and a large part of the water vapor on the land comes from the ocean, so how does the water vapor in the ocean come to the land? One part is achieved by evaporation into the atmosphere and the flow of the atmosphere to land, and the other part is achieved by high and low pressure, and the desert plays an important role in this process.
Because the specific heat capacity of the desert is small, the temperature will increase faster in summer, which will form a low pressure area; while the specific heat capacity of the ocean is large, and the temperature increase rate will be slower in the summer, which will form a high pressure area. The water vapor from the high pressure will continue to flow to the low pressure area, which can promote the flow of water vapor into the inland, which is beneficial to the development of agriculture.
If we plant all the deserts with trees and turn them into oasis, then the low-pressure zone of the desert will disappear, and the water vapor of the ocean will not be able to bring inland through the desert, but will make many areas dry and less rainy. Therefore, the existence of deserts also has certain benefits. We cannot allow desertification to continue. We need to control the deserts caused by human factors. At the same time, we cannot eliminate all the deserts formed by the natural environment. Otherwise, it will cause damage to the earth’s ecosystem and trigger A series of unknown changes.