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What would happen if we turned a desert into a forest?
This question is a thought that many people will have, and scientists are busy answering it.
In 2019, a paper did this, but the final conclusion made people afraid to do it.
In the paper, the paper argues that if the world's deserts were to be turned into forests, nature would pay a heavy price, a price that humans might not be able to afford.
So how did the desert form?
How do deserts affect the planet's ecology?
And what happens when a desert is turned into a forest?
1. The formation of deserts.
Climatic factors are one of the main factors leading to land desertification, which can push the history of mankind to ancient times, or even to ancient times.
At the poles of the Earth, we can see permanent glaciers, while at the equator, there are tropical rainforests rich in plants.
This kind of climate change has gradually shifted the focus of people's lives from glaciers to the equatorial zone in ancient times, which has also made gradual progress in human social civilization, but few people have paid attention to this law of climate change.
And this law is the reason for the development and evolution of human activity.
While human activities are affecting the Earth's climate, they are also tragically changing the face of the land.
There are many standards for dividing climate zones on the earth, and the most common is to divide the earth's climate zones into cold zones, mid-latitudes and tropics, which are mainly divided by the different areas of solar irradiation received by the earth.
From south to north on Earth, different latitudes receive different areas of solar exposure, with the north and south poles receiving the lowest area and the equator receiving the largest area, so this also leads to extreme temperatures in these two places.
However, this is not the main cause of climate change, but the main factor is the Hadri Circulation, which is a belt of air currents that surrounds the Earth, which is around 30 degrees latitude.
This location is the most desert place on Earth, and the Hadri Ring is a belt of westerly and easterly winds that blows dry air from the ground to high altitudes.
The resulting air flow bands gradually transport the dry air to the two extremes, making the two places even drier.
The Hadri Ring is like a big fan on the earth, and the desert on the earth is also the sand and dust on this big fan, and the sand and dust produced by the desert will continue to migrate with the direction of the wind, thus forming a new desert.
2. The importance of deserts.
Deserts play a very important role in the earth's ecosystem and human society.
First of all, in terms of mineral resources, we all know that there will be some precious mineral resources in the desert, such as oil fields and natural gas fields, and there will be some other mineral resources in the desert, such as coal mines and gold mines.
These mineral resources are produced due to the continuous formation of new deserts in the desert, bringing some minerals deep underground to the surface to form some mineral deposits.
However, the desert also has a very important role, that is, there are some ancient animal and plant remains in the desert, so we can use it to do some archaeological research.
The second is its impact on the climate, as the dust produced by the desert changes with the direction of the wind, creating a diverse climate on the planet.
There are very few plants on the desert, so it absorbs water from nearby areas through a lot of evaporation, resulting in an arid climate.
At the same time, on the desert, because there are no plants to absorb carbon dioxide, this causes the temperature above the desert to become higher and higher, resulting in an arid climate on the desert.
The third is its impact on the water cycle, the arid climate above the desert will cause more and more water above the surface to evaporate, resulting in less rainfall, which will also cause the temperature on the earth to become higher and higher.
Finally, there is its effect on the vegetation on the earth, there is no vegetation on the desert, which will cause the dust on the desert to reflect the sun's rays more and more, thus making the earth's temperature higher and higher.
At the same time, there will be a large amount of sand and dust on the desert, because the sand dust has a very strong ability to absorb water vapor in the air, resulting in less and less water vapor in the air.
As a result, it is difficult for plants on the surface of the earth to grow, which makes the concentration of oxygen on the surface of the earth lower and lower, resulting in fewer and fewer life on the earth.
3. What happens when a desert is turned into a forest?
So what would happen if we cleared all the sand and dust from the desert and planted trees on top of the area to turn the desert into a forest?
The first is that the sand and dust on the desert are manually removed, and the desert will become drier and drier, so that the area of the desert will become larger and larger.
The second is to plant trees in deserts, which will have a certain impact on the global climate system, and this impact is very large.
Afforestation will greatly change the reflectivity of the earth's surface, which will make the earth's temperature change very drastically, which will lead to the global climate system becoming very chaotic, and the earth's ecosystem will become more and more unstable.
And because the tree species planted in the plantation are more drought-tolerant, as they grow, they need more and more water, which in turn makes the groundwater storage less and less.
At the same time, because the tree species planted in the artificial forest are relatively drought tolerant, there will be fewer and fewer plants on the desert, resulting in the area of the desert becoming larger and larger.
It can be seen from this that not only can we not turn the world's deserts into forests, but it is also a very dangerous thing for the earth's ecosystem to turn the world's deserts into forests.
epilogue
As a natural ecosystem, deserts play a very important role on the earth, and this ecosystem, like other ecosystems, has its own set of survival rules.
As a natural ecosystem, deserts play a very important role in maintaining the stability of the earth's ecosystem, so we cannot change it at will.