
Saving Canada's only desert - nkurz
http://www.dw.com/en/saving-canadas-onlydesert/a-19470246
======
pipio21
There is the opposite problem, which for me is way more serious: The desert
growing. In Spain it grows each year in the South East.

But Spain's desert is small compared to Sahara's, that is as big as Europe.
Its dunes are as big as buildings, with pictures you can't really grasp the
enormity of this dessert. When Sahara grows each year it literally engulfs
entire villages.

In Egypt and center of Africa there are cities that were prosperous in the
past that were engulfed by dessert and disappeared.

Honestly I would not shed a tear for big parts of the big dessert going away.
When solar energy and desalination becomes cheaper I expect Sahara to be one
of the most fertile places on Earth.

You can probably preserve the biodiversity freezing eggs and sperm of the
creatures that live there. There are not so much. I believe that with
pesticides and herbicides we have destroyed way more biodiversity of our
world(not the desert but our forest) and nobody has complained.

~~~
wodenokoto
Currently a wall of forest is being planned to stop the desertification of
southern Africa. The accompanying satellite photo on the wikipedia article is
quite telling of the enormous size of the desert.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Green_Wall](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Green_Wall)

~~~
ommunist
"a wall of forest is being planned to stop the desertification of southern
Africa". Very interesting, no kidding. Who is planning that? The last
successful country in such endeavour is Kazakhstan. And to certain extent -
China. Making 'wall of forest' is a programme with planning horizon of more
than 50 years. I'd like to know the name of stakeholders.

~~~
wodenokoto
So apparently Africa has a union not unlike the early EU [1] and they are in
charge of it, as prominently mentioned in the wikipedia article above.

[1]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/African_Union](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/African_Union)

~~~
ommunist
Thank you. Forest plantations in arid zones are tricky thing. I know that,
because I studied that topic for about a year. Expensive too. I wish them 100
years of piece and prosperity to complete that, and will gladly assist, if
invited.

------
oneloop
I see in some places people are trying to stop deserts from turning into
something else and in other places people are trying to stop something else
from turning into deserts.

Are we always trying to stop things from changing, and a posteriori inventing
arguments for why that particular change is bad? (Don't get me wrong, I'm not
saying that all change is equally indifferent either)

~~~
dogma1138
Those are 2 different things, and usually both are caused by humans.

Desertification is a big problem and it has many human linked causes, large
cities change rainfall patterns, deforestation causes soil migration changes
the mineral content of the soil and reduces its moisture content and most
importantly desertification affects humans as it creeps into arable land
increasing the cost of growing crops or in some areas making it almost
impossible.

The other problem is the destruction of natural deserts due to buildup of man
made structures, agriculture, diversion of water sources, overall climate
change (a desert doesn't have to be a "hot" place, many deserts are actually
in danger due to rising temperatures which increase rainfall, melt glaciers,
or soil locked ice) and many other things.

No one is inventing posteriori arguments and decides arbitrary what is good
and what is bad, one environmental change can drastically affect human
civilization including costing human lives in the long run, the other is
unnecessary destruction or damage to existing natural habitats which do not
have much (negative) impact over human civilization or lives but can and
should be prevented if not reverted. This is not different than any other
preservation effort, you want bears in the wild, doesn't mean you want them
living in the woods just by your house, and it also doesn't mean that you
would not shoot them if they come and endanger human lives.

~~~
oneloop
But much like you say "humans have an impact on what's around them, causing it
to change, and eventually that could cause loss of lives", you can also say
that for anything at all, can't you? Replace humans with X = bears, trees,
anything...

~~~
dogma1138
Humans are not really subjected to natural selection anymore, we need to
really screw up the planet for that to happen and by that time it would be too
late.

Nature tends to balance itself out, this is slightly harder to do with humans
which have the technology to geoengineer their habitats.

But even if it was so it doesn't matter, no person in their right mind would
think it's ok for me to die, and for millions or billions of other people to
die just because it's the natural order of things.

And for the most part you can't even hide behind it's a "natural process"
because humans are geoengineers we build huge concrete cities, we build dams,
we divert rivers, we strip whole mountains and dig the decomposing biomass of
our "ancestors" and burn it as fuel.

Bears and trees don't do that.

~~~
oneloop
Ok, so your argument is to object to my claim that things other than humans
can have an impact that leads to loss of lives? I ask this because of your
final comment that "bears and trees don't do that".

------
cperciva
In case it helps anyone unfamiliar with the geography, the Okanagan Desert is
the northern tip of the arid region which covers the Eastern half of
Washington state; it lies in the rain shadow of the Cascade mountains.

------
gambiting
Not really related, but I just wanted to share - there's another desert that
almost no one knows about, and it's right in the middle of Europe - in Poland:

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/B%C5%82%C4%99d%C3%B3w_Desert](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/B%C5%82%C4%99d%C3%B3w_Desert)

It's slowly disappearing though.

~~~
afarrell
Why would you want to conserve that? Isn't reverse-desertification a good
thing?

~~~
Sanddancer
Desert areas often have unique plants and animals living in them that would
quickly die if competing with faster growing lifeforms. This tends to not be a
good thing, because in proper deserts, there are times of the year where there
is a lot of rain, but a long period of time where there is little to no rain.
So, these invasive species will shoot up in the winter and spring, then dry
out and die in the summer and fall when there's no rain to keep the plants
alive. The resulting tinderbox is ripe for a fire to burn through and cause
problems for everyone.

------
legulere
> by the Okanagan Desert, a semi-arid region

aren't deserts defined by being arid regions?

~~~
steve19
You are correct.

It is "technically only semi-arid shrub-steppe." [0] which are "Shrub-steppes
are distinguishable from deserts, which are too dry to support a noticeable
cover of perennial grasses or other shrubs" [1]

Semi-arid regions are also colloquially called "semi-deserts". As far as the
semi-arid regions I have visited go, it seems to have pretty decent vegetation
compared to others.

[0]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Okanagan_Desert](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Okanagan_Desert)

[1] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shrub-
steppe](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shrub-steppe)

------
happyslobro
Our only desert? There is a small desert in Yukon, as well: Carcross Desert.
At least by my definition of a desert: wind blown sand dunes with little
patches of hardy shrubs and scrawny trees.

Maybe the fact that it formed from a lake bed makes it not a real desert?

~~~
codesterling
Sounds like some swaths in Saskatchewan. Even the badlands in Alberta has
areas like that. I wonder what the distinctions are?

~~~
ommunist
I was wrong. I admit that. Saskatchewan does not have Lael Parrott - Professor
of Sustainability.

------
Fricken
The whole tundra is a desert. Everything north of the arctic circle is a
desert.

~~~
cpach
_”Everything north of the arctic circle is a desert”_

Nope ;-)
[https://www.flickr.com/photos/83908676@N02/12262674976/](https://www.flickr.com/photos/83908676@N02/12262674976/)

------
byron_fast
Not sure why the Carberry desert doesn't qualify as a desert:
[https://www.tripadvisor.ca/Attraction_Review-g1871864-d50114...](https://www.tripadvisor.ca/Attraction_Review-g1871864-d501147-Reviews-
Carberry_Spirit_Sands_Desert-Carberry_Manitoba.html)

I was under the impression it holds the largest piece of "soft desert" in
Canada, but maybe that's wrong.

~~~
gwent
"There are almost as many definitions of deserts and classification systems as
there are deserts in the world. Most classifications rely on some combination
of the number of days of rainfall, the total amount of annual rainfall,
temperature, humidity, or other factors. In 1953, Peveril Meigs divided desert
regions on Earth into three categories according to the amount of
precipitation they received. In this now widely accepted system, extremely
arid lands have at least 12 consecutive months without rainfall, arid lands
have less than 250 millimeters of annual rainfall, and semiarid lands have a
mean annual precipitation of between 250 and 500 millimeters. Arid and
extremely arid land are deserts, and semiarid grasslands generally are
referred to as steppes"

[http://pubs.usgs.gov/gip/deserts/what/](http://pubs.usgs.gov/gip/deserts/what/)

As I understand it Carberry gets 300-500 mm of rain per year.

------
Animats
That area is just the northern tip of a larger "desert" area in Washington
State. There's plenty of "desert" in that area. It's just mostly on the other
side of the border.

It looks more like Silicon Valley in dry season than a real desert.

~~~
jghn
"a real desert"

What does that look like? Antarctica is the largest desert in the world, does
it look like "a real desert"?

------
mabbo
The way things are going, they could probably introduce the threatened species
to eastern Ontario, which is slowly becoming a desert it seems.

------
haloboy777
I thought this was about maple syrup. :/ Sorry for my ignorance.

