Desert and green planet invasion

Occupying up to 20% of the earth's surface but it is still not enough, the desert is increasingly " expanding " to turn the rich green lands into wilderness, arid and hot.

Land of death

Water, the source of life, is a " rare asset " in the desert. Without eternal streams and rivers, water appears only rarely in oases or dug wells from " aquifers ," which can be traced back to the rains . thousands of years ago.

During the day the sun burned. You can even boil eggs by putting them on sand. But when night falls, the cold cuts the flesh. The temperature difference between day and night is up to tens of degrees Celsius (the highest can reach 80 ^o C). Under such temperature changes, lava is severely degraded and eroded by hot-cold expansion.

Moroccan Desert (Photo: photoglimpse)

Resonance with such harshness are other factors such as the large amount of solar radiation, lots of sand and hot wind that always blows strongly, creating a lot of sandstorms, fierce dust and wind that can bury and destroy all . Desert storms are formed by convective air currents on the ground. Sand and debris blown up in the air could be tens of meters high. All created a picture of the dead " hell ": dry, dazzling, all year round the heat wave.

Such harsh natural conditions make life here rare. Very few animals and plants can adapt to this harsh environment. Only a handful of thorny plants, cactus families, arid resistant grass paper can exist. They are capable of rapid growth, good drought tolerance, have thorny roots and stems that hold nutrients to accommodate the immense sandy sea.

Living in " hell ", animals in the desert have adjusted their biology, they become smaller and often work at night to avoid the intense sunshine during the day. They have special abilities like good thirst, fast running. They often live in caves such as ostriches, antelopes, gerbils, lizards . The land of " hell " has made snakes, scorpions, spiders . become extremely poisonous.

The largest desert in the world is the Sahara located in North Africa, extending from the Atlantic coast to the east to the coast of Hong Hai. The Sahara has a total area of ​​8,600 km2, accounting for 1/3 of Africa's area and goes through many countries such as Egypt, Sudan, Libya, Western Sahara . The Sahara is a desert that characterizes desert and desert. Stone desert. In this place, there are not only huge sand dunes, pebbles and gravel beaches but also vast areas of lava.

The colored people who live in the desert are called " date dwellers ". They live in oases and do farming. Some nomadic people like the Arabs, Berber people in the northern Sahara are called "camel inhabitants" because their lives are attached to this particular animal. The " camel inhabitants " have a habit of living in tents or in places with grass, water and using camels as their main means of transportation. Like a humpback camel in the Sahara, there is a special ability to starve, so it is dubbed the boat in the desert.

According to the research results, several thousand years ago, in the position of the Sahara desert today encompasses a humid climate, there are many large rivers and lakes, in which Lake Mexico-Chad (the largest ancient lake in Sahara), covering an area of ​​350,000 km ² . Many remains of ancient gibbon, and geological features formed rock desert 7 million years ago. Thus, the Sahara desert is not a " young " desert.

Compared to the Sahara, the Atacama Desert (northern Chile in South America) is not as wide, but it is dubbed the world's oldest and barren desert. Atacama is located at a height of 4,000m above sea level, including wide sandy beaches, jagged rocky mountains, salt hills and some reservoirs . salt water. Scientists believe that extremely arid conditions existed at the Atacama for at least 25 million years, much longer than the Namibia desert in Africa or the desert valleys of the Antarctic (about 10 million years).

Atacama Desert has no sign of life. There is no oasis, no water, no creatures, no insects. So the Atacama is called the " desert of the deserts ". This is a very strange phenomenon called " blooming desert ". The flowers are full of blooming colors that appear in a short time with a period of 10-15 years / time in the Northern region and every 3-4 years in the Southern Atacama area. This phenomenon occurs because of the short cycle of heavy rains and then Atacama becomes the desert of the desert again.

And the desert invasion

(Photo: Outback-australia-travel-secrets)

The world environmentalists have recently warned each year, over 3 billion tons of dust from desert in the world are released into the earth's atmosphere, and now the amount of dust from the Sahara desert into the atmosphere is higher than that. 10 times the end of the 1940s.

The amount of desert dust released into the atmosphere increases rapidly every year as a result of climate change and direct human activity. A common dust storm carries between 20 and 30 million tons of dust. The impact of desert dust storms spread throughout the earth. The widespread saline intrusion in China, India, Pakistan, and Australia and is a major threat to the communities living on the edge of the desert, has helped turn the land there into ruins. In just 30 years, China's Tarm River Basin has lost nearly 13,000 square kilometers of agricultural land because of saline intrusion.

The ultimate weapon in the desert invasion is climate change. The climate is getting warmer, causing particularly severe droughts, which can destroy many vegetation in an irreversible way. The amount of rainwater in desert areas has decreased sharply over the past two decades while the temperature in most of this area has increased by 5-7 ^o C. This will accelerate the evaporation and cause sandstorms. , drag the desert to nearby communities.

In 2006, the United Nations warned that one-third of the world's arable land is at risk of desertification. From the mid 1990s to 2000, the earth lost nearly 4,000 km2 of cultivated land by desertification every year. The areas most at risk of desertification are in the southern Sahara or Gobi desert in China.

According to environmentalists, desertification has become a global issue, increasing poverty and forced migration trends. The urgency in this war is how to curb climate warming, increase forest planting to reduce the impact of dust storms, and save water resources and develop fringe areas. desert.