Huge-scale ecological engineering around the edges of one of the world's largest and driest deserts has turned it into a carbon sink that absorbs more CO2 than it emits, research suggests.
There have been coördinated reforestation and afforestation prohects on all populated continents for the last four decades at least. I’m surprised that we only now confirmed that these processes can “transform a desert into a carbon sink” and I’m wondering if the data is lagging or if the work is much slower than I realized.
I believe there’s been real progress in the Sahel in western Africa. Iirc it involves more than just planting trees but full on land management like having grazing livestock graze in newly forested areas.
I think I watched a documentary about planting trees in the dessert, might have been Gobi? Dessert… I think that’s in china… pretty sure it was Chinese pretty wild they were literally on giant sand dunes
The Gobi is in China (and Mongolia, it covers most of the border between them). It’s actually quite possible that the documentary was about the same project as this article, though. The Taklamakan is either next to the Gobi or just the western part of the Gobi depending on who you ask
We’re much better at turning carbon sinks into deserts.
There have been coördinated reforestation and afforestation prohects on all populated continents for the last four decades at least. I’m surprised that we only now confirmed that these processes can “transform a desert into a carbon sink” and I’m wondering if the data is lagging or if the work is much slower than I realized.
I believe there’s been real progress in the Sahel in western Africa. Iirc it involves more than just planting trees but full on land management like having grazing livestock graze in newly forested areas.
I think I watched a documentary about planting trees in the dessert, might have been Gobi? Dessert… I think that’s in china… pretty sure it was Chinese pretty wild they were literally on giant sand dunes
The Gobi is in China (and Mongolia, it covers most of the border between them). It’s actually quite possible that the documentary was about the same project as this article, though. The Taklamakan is either next to the Gobi or just the western part of the Gobi depending on who you ask