Desert revegetation machine - GIF

[ToolTalkBot]

Desert revegetation machine.




Previously:

Desert railway - photo
Emile Leray desert motorcycle - photos
Icy flash flood in desert - GIF
Namib Desert meets the Atlantic Ocean - photo and GIF
Transporting an enormous mining truck in the Chilean desert - video

[Hoosiersmoker]

What are they trying to grow in the dessert without irrigation?

[IntheGroove]

More like dune control...

[Elizabeth Greene]

What are they trying to grow in the dessert without irrigation?

I have data!

To explain, Desertification is a process. Something kills the plants, the roots rot and stop holding the soil together. Then the soil blows away. Heavy sand and grit particles are left, and water runs off of them and through them super-fast so new plants can't grow.

To reverse that, you need to stop the soil from blowing away and slow water down so it can soak in to get pioneer plants growing. This breaks the cycle.

The Chinese system is to shove these windbreaks into the soil and then do drip irrigation of drought tolerant trees. They stop the erosion and help water soak into the soil, then pioneer grasses grow, and soon you have grassland again.

Another system I've read about, and one that seems to have disappeared entirely off the internet, is to use a tool that cuts "scoops" out of encrusted sand and drops seed into them. The scoops are deep enough to prevent them from immediately filling in or blowing away. When it rains, these scoops hold the water long enough for the plants to germinate. This was crazy successful, making the land suitable for (careful) grazing within a year or two.

A third system that works on not-fully-desertified land is to go straight to high-density grazing. There's more about this here.
https://www.npr.org/2013/11/15/24372...nto-grasslands

If I wanted to pursue this, I'd look for dirt cheap (<$500/acre) desert or scrub* land in New Mexico > 100 acres with a wash** on it (a dry creekbed where flash floods roll through when it rains), near I-25 ***, not in the lee of a mountain****, make sure I had the water rights on it, carve a bunch of gullies in it to catch that runoff, scoop-and-seed de-desertify it, and run cattle on it with high density move-every-day grazing. The goldilocks scenario here would be to get a grazing contract, where a rancher has too many animals for their grass and they pay you to run them, but you can't bank on that, particularly on scrub, and have to plan on buying breeding age cows or calves instead.

I made a full business plan on this once that showed a FAT return on investment, but I don't trust it. I've worked with cows and calves, but I'm a computer nerd, not a cowgirl. I live in the wet southeast, not the dry southwest. I literally don't know what I don't know, and that could cost a lot.

* Desert is cheaper.
** Why the wash? 9 inches of rain a year isn't enough. Drilling wells is expensive, and you'll need a deep one to make sure the cows can drink. It's better not to also need well water to irrigate, so the gullies let you get water free from the flash floods.
*** Transportation and distance costs are a significant factor, particularly if you want to do lucrative direct-to-consumer marketing in Albuquerque.
**** Rain shadow significantly reduces rainfall in the lee of a mountain. These create non-fixable natural deserts, as opposed to "Oops we killed all the plants" fixable deserts.