Stuff You Should Know - How Desertification Works

Episode Date: April 6, 2010

Josh and Chuck discuss the problem of desertification, from what causes serious degradation of dryland ecosystems to possible ways to repair the damage, in this episode. Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.comSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

They're breaking in! From M. Night Shyamalan. Your family must sacrifice one of the three of you to prevent the apocalypse. We're not sacrificing anyone. This February. The last three times. For every new you give us, billions will perish.

This is delusional! Save your family. I'm on my family side. Or save humanity. Make a choice. Now get the cabin. Only in theaters February 3rd. We're at our under 17 at a middle without parent.

Hey everybody, do you ever scream at your printer or hurl empty ink cartridges across the room? We all do. Which means that you likely suffer from cartridge conniptions caused by irritating ink cartridges constantly running out of ink. It's the worst everybody. We can all agree on that. But thankfully the Epson Eco Tank Printer is the perfect cure.

It's cartridge free, conniption free, and prescription free. With big ink tanks and a ridiculous amount of ink, you can finally kiss expensive ink cartridges goodbye. Yeah, so check out the Epson Eco Tank. Just fill and chill.

Available at participating retailers and at epson.com Brought to you by the reinvented 2012 Camry. It's ready. Are you? Welcome to Stuff You Should Know from HowStuffWorks.com Hey and welcome to the podcast.

I'm Josh Clark with me as always is Charles W. Chuck Bryant. You? How's it going? Oh, you know, Josh, it's Monday. I don't like your recording on Mondays. Oh, neither. We're in the stupid room that you hate. My head hurts too.

Jerry's all bummed out. What a life. What are we doing? I don't know. This isn't a big upper of a topic either. The desertification? Yeah, maybe it's a good thing we're not in like some chipper mood. Yeah, I think you're right.

Because, as you know, Chuck, desertification is one of the overlooked, I think, problems, crises facing humanity right now. Yeah, man. Big time. Especially here in the cushy US, especially in the very lush southeastern US. Yeah. It's kind of easy to overlook. And we even had like a pretty huge drought a couple of years ago.

Yeah. And you know, we're like, oh no, we have slightly less drinking water than we did before. Right. We had sort of slight issues. We had some uprooting of trees and such. Sure. There was that. There wasn't nearly as much boating or jet skiing as usual.

Yeah. Which I'm sure affected a lot of the gas stations around some of the lakes, right? Yeah. There were probably some impacts here and there that we didn't think about. And you're probably right. But it's also even easier to overlook some of the impacts that take place during desertification or marginalized societies in the world, right? Yeah.

For sure. So what are we looking at? I think it's like 90% of the people who live in areas that are at risk of desertification are the poor, undeveloped countries, right? Right, Josh. It's about 2 billion people. Right. And for these people, there's kind of a slightly more problems than not being able to jet ski

as much as one would like. The infant mortality rate is about 10 times that of an industrialized nation. Indeed. And something like 24,000 people die every day from starvation. A lot of these people are found in desertified areas, right? Right. Let's get to the nitty-gritty of this, Chuck. What is desertification?

I'm just going to say it in my words. Okay. Desertification is when natural things take place and then man-made things take place to cause essentially what is the degradation of the soil itself to where it will erode, things won't grow there, and basically you're left with a barren desert landscape. Right. That's Chuck's definition. That's a good definition, Chuck.

Thanks. It's dead on. Two chief processes that hasten desertification are poor soil management and overuse of the land. Right. This land is not meant to have lots and lots of people in cattle grazing, not people grazing, obviously, people farming cattle grazing. Right.

And the land we're talking about specifically are semi-arid regions, right? Dry lands. Right. And we have one of those here in the United States. You wouldn't think of it because it's artificially managed, but the Great Plains are semi-arid. And because of those man-made interventions like overuse and intensive farming techniques that did not observing soil conservation, we actually did experience desertification in the last century.

Yeah, exactly. We got all these newfangled farming equipment and said, hey, we're kind of poor because the depression is coming up and we need to use all this stuff to really farm a lot. Right. And that's what happened. And then the dust bowl happened. But we got it back. Well, there was this perfect storm that happened actually in the Midwest in the late 20s.

Since it was the roaring 20s, everybody was making tons of cash and farmers started borrowing heavily. Right. And then the depression hit much like today. The values of land dropped, the prices of commodities, including agricultural products dropped, and people started having trouble making payments, banks foreclosed. At the same time, the farmers were hit really, really hard financially. They were also hit really, really hard naturally because as they tried to step up farming to

increase yields, all they did was strip the land of its nutrients. And it became this vicious cycle where the harder they tried to coal stuff from the land, the worse off it got, and then all of a sudden nothing would grow. Yeah. Well, bringing a drought, which is the second component, mother nature lending a hand, and well, not a hand, a backhand. And that's when the dust bowl occurred and we were in bad shape in the Great Plains for a long time.

Yeah. Apparently these things were like the dust storms that came up, like trains would miss their stops in the middle of these things because they couldn't see. Static electricity is easily generated by these particles. So cars would stall. So people started dragging chains behind them to ground the cars to keep them from stalling. People would put wet sheets up over their windows and like you would have drifts of dust like in your house with all the doors and windows closed, it would still get in.

It was everywhere. Yeah, it was bad news, bad times. Right. Right. But we got it back. We did. Like I said, the Great Plains farming once again, rich soil once again, and that's a little teaser because we can combat this, but we'll get to that at the end.

Right. So it's happened here. It's happening other places. It's actually happening at a pretty rapid pace, isn't it, Chuck? Yes, Josh. Stats. Are you calling for stats? Yeah.

New deserts are growing at a rate of 20,000 square miles a year. Yeah. And when you consider that half of the total land mass of the earth is dry land and 10 to 20% of that land is already degraded, then it's not looking good. No, it's not. And there's not a lot of processes in place right now that are going to stop this, although we have a pretty clear picture of what's causing this, right? Like we said, poor soil conservation.

Yeah. It's pretty easy actually. But when you look at it, it's not like the most complicated problem. Well, let's talk about the problem first, like what's going on, what causes desertification? Well, if you're talking ecosystems like the human body and like any living thing, you're looking for balance. Right. What was the word we used in the?

Homeostasis. Homeostasis. Yeah. So an ecosystem wants balance as well, and anything to throw it out of balance is not good, which is what happens with desertification. When you get infrequent rainfall, you lose what's called humus, which is the really good organic topsoil. Right.

That's what you want. That's what you want. Dead plant and animal material, right? Yeah. So bobcats walking along, gets struck by lightning, falls over onto the ground. That's great for mother nature. It's going to degrade and be eaten by microbes and then turned into humus, which supports soil.

Yeah. And carbon, nitrogen, sulfur, phosphorus, all these things that make your topsoil really fertile. Right. And there's nothing wrong with the semi-arid region. Like it's not a desert that you don't want to confuse the two. The problem is when humans come in and say, we really need this land, this semi-arid land and we're going to overuse it, then it does become a desert.

And it becomes overused by not rotating crops, by not using or overusing chemical fertilizers Right. Not composting like you should. Right. Exactly. And kind of irresponsible irrigation techniques, right, allowing for runoff, that kind of stuff. The problem is, is like you said, humus is so essential that if you strip the soil of its humus, no matter how much rainfall comes along, it's not going to restore that balance.

Even worse, the rainfall is just going to carry the soil away. Yeah. Just erodes it further, which is the problem. So what are some of the things that we're doing to the semi-arid regions? Let's say a bunch of people suddenly come to a semi-arid region and say, we're going to start farming here. What are some of the uses of this land that can be problematic? Well, grazing, grazing of cattle, like irresponsible grazing.

What happens is a lot of poor people might migrate to an area because their area has been degraded. So you have a mass migration of people that will bring in all their cows. So they're overusing the land. All of a sudden the cows are grazing and you can't fault them for saying it's irresponsible grazing because they're trying to survive and they eat all the grass, let's say. Grass is in trees are essential for holding that top soil together. So once that's gone or firewood was another one, right?

Yeah, because if they're looking for firewood, right, if you're using that fuel, then you're going to cut down trees because there's your fuel right there. When you cut down a bunch of trees, you actually make the land much more reflective which dries out the atmosphere. It causes more evaporation. And also once you lose that anchor for the soil, the soil gets kicked up as dust. So the combination of that more, that drier climate plus the dust in the air means it's harder for precipitation to form, making the area even more arid.

Yeah, like compounds on itself. Sure. I got a stat. I was telling you that the mass migration of people in the 1990s dry land regions grew 18.5% in population 2023 is already well underway everybody so don't wait any longer to level up your small business and the way you can do that is by joining up with stamps.com. That's right because with stamps.com you can be able to print your own postage and shipping labels right there from your home or office or home office and you know, it's ready to

go in minutes. You can get back to running your business sooner than later. Yep. Stamps.com is like the post office elevated. They have rates you literally can't find anywhere else which comes in handy because postage rates just increased again like up to 84% off of USPS and UPS plus stamps.com automatically tells you your cheapest and fastest shipping options. So use stamps.com to print postage wherever you do business.

All you need is that computer and printer set your business up for success. When you get started with stamps.com today, just use our promo code stuff for a special offer that's going to include a four week trial plus free postage and that free digital scale no long term commitments or contracts. Just go to stamps.com, click on the microphone at the top of the page and enter our code stuff. Have you ever just thought to yourself, why me? Why is life so unfair?

What do other people see when they watch me walk by when I catch my reflection? People run like I have a contagious infection, but it's not my mental health. I know that can be crushing. I'm talking about plaque psoriasis, but you didn't see that coming. I'm sick of the judgment, the discomfort and itching. Vitamic cream is the once daily steroid free treatment I know I've been missing. Vitamin to pinner off cream one percent is a prescription topical treatment for adults with plaque psoriasis.

Do not use if you're allergic to Vitamic cream. The most common side effects of Vitamic cream include red raised bumps around the hair pores, pain or swelling in the nose and throat, skin rash or irritation, including itching and redness, peeling, burning or stinging, headache, itching and flu. Tell your doctor about all the medicines you take and if you are pregnant or plan to be, ask your doctor if Vitamic cream is right for you. You deserve more from your topical. To learn more, visit TopicalUpRising.com.

I mean these are places that shouldn't have that many people there anyway. Right. They were probably already overtaxed, then mass migration happens and it's just a recipe for disaster. Right, and the problem is humans migrate a lot faster than land can be restored, right? So you move from one place to another, use that place up, you move to the next one, you're eventually going to run out of places to move. Yeah.

Right? That's what's happening. It's easy to overlook here in the U.S. although I don't think we should because we do have very, we have really good irrigation techniques in the Great Plains these days, but if you look at it, we're not, there's not a bunch of people living on the Great Plains. It's pretty sparsely populated, but humans in the U.S. are virtually represented on the Great Plains because you've got 1% of Americans farming for the rest of America, right? So there's like a virtual demand on that land through farming because it produces the food

we eat. So we may not be living there, but we're using that land just as if we were indigenous people all living on the Great Plains. And the water that's used there actually is virtually exported elsewhere, right? So we're putting in water inputs there. It's growing and we're taking that water basically and exporting it to the places where we eat that food because we don't have to use the water here, so it's like a virtual export of water.

Interesting. Well, the other thing too being American is we import a lot of our food because we can afford to do so. So we get food from all over the world. One of the things that exacerbates the desertification is these migrating poor people, they're relying on the natural ecosystem around them pretty much only. Right. They can't afford to, sometimes in regions where they just can't import anyway, plus

they can't afford to because prices are skyrocketing for wheat and soy, so they need to use the grass that's behind them and the cow that's eating it and the little tiny river full of dirty water. Yeah, because if you're cutting down trees for fuel, you're probably not exporting a lot of stuff. 2023 is already well underway, everybody, so don't wait any longer to level up your small business. And the way you can do that is by joining up with Stamps.com.

That's right, because with Stamps.com, you're going to be able to print your own postage and shipping labels right there from your home or office or home office. And you know, it's ready to go in minutes. You can get back to running your business sooner than later. Yep. Stamps.com is like the post office elevated. They have rates you literally can't find anywhere else, which comes in handy because postage rates just increased again, like up to 84% off of USPS and UPS.

Plus, Stamps.com automatically tells you your cheapest and fastest shipping options. So use Stamps.com to print postage wherever you do business. All you need is that computer and printer. Set your business up for success. When you get started with Stamps.com today, just use our promo code STUFF for a special offer that's going to include a four week trial plus free postage and that free digital scale. No long term commitments or contracts.

Just go to Stamps.com, click on the microphone at the top of the page and enter our code STUFF. Have you ever just thought to yourself, why me? Why is life so unfair? What do other people see? When they watch me walk by, when I catch my reflection, people run like I have a contagious infection. But it's not my mental health.

I know that can be crushing. I'm talking about plaque psoriasis, bet you didn't see that coming. I'm sick of the judgment, the discomfort in itching. Vitamic cream is the one daily steroid free treatment I know I've been missing. Vitamin to pinner off cream one percent is a prescription topical treatment for adults with plaque psoriasis. Do not use if you're allergic to Vitamic cream. The most common side effects of Vitamic cream include red raised bumps around the hair

pores, pain or swelling in the nose and throat, skin rash or irritation, including itching and redness, peeling, burning or stinging, headache, itching and flu. Tell your doctor about all the medicines you take and if you are pregnant or plan to be. Ask your doctor if Vitamic cream is right for you. You deserve more from your topical. To learn more visit TopicalUpRising.com. I got another stab for you. Let's hear it.

You ready to be creeped out? I am. Fifty million people will be displaced by desertification in the next ten years. I know, I saw that. So it says peopleandplanet.net. That's a lot of people. That's a lot of people. And they're going to places like we said that aren't necessarily fertile oases anyway.

So it's just making everything worse. And again if you don't have the money to import food, you don't have the money to virtually import water, hence the 24,000 people that die every day of starvation. Yeah, every day. Wow. That's a very sad stat. Like you said though Chuck, so let's provide a quick recap. You've got a semi-urid region that looks kind of lush, it doesn't look like a desert.

You come in, you start planting. You use too much chemical fertilizer. You overgraze, you cut down trees for fuel, and you're making a living. A few people can do this and it can be sustainable, but when too many people start doing it, then the humus is lost in the soil and the land starts reflecting back into the sky. Precipitation goes down, the soil is loose, storms blow in, and you've got nothing. You have desert. Erosion and desert, yeah.

How do you combat this? Well Josh, it's not easy. It's actually fundamentally easy, but it's hard because not enough people are taking part. Right, and it needs to be done on such a massive scale, right? Exactly. What you have to do is start at a grassroots level, that's what they say, and you need to go in there.

The people like the UNI know has a group, we'll plug them in a second, and you go in and you teach these people long-term benefits, teaching them to think long-term as far as rotating crops, terracing the land, proper irrigation techniques. So they're not so short-sighted in just trying to get the crop this year. You got to teach them. It's hard to do. That's what we did in the late 30s and early 40s. The federal government was like, wow, our nation's breadbasket is a desert now.

We have to do something. But they determined that they couldn't constitutionally force farmers to use improved soil techniques. So they turned to the states to basically force them to and they created soil conservation districts and made it virtually free to farm and undertake these soil conservation techniques. So they're like, we're going to provide you with everything you need, just do this, right? Use contour plowing to trap water better when you irrigate. The federal government also planted between 1935 and 1942 185,000 miles of trees. Yeah, that's a huge one because trees not only do they help keep the soil together with

the root system, but they block the wind and the wind causes a lot of erosion. This is all easier done in America, obviously. We got our work cut out against us for developing nations. Well yeah, but China, they're starting to get a little more cash in their pocket than they had before and they have a huge problem with the certification is the Gobi is creeping closer and closer toward Beijing. Apparently a dust storm from the Gobi that covers Beijing, some of them are so enormous that they can be detected in the states.

Yeah, crazy. Yeah, it's a big dust storm. It is. China is taking action though. They built a, or they're in the process of planning a 3,000 mile long belt of trees along the edge of the Gobi, which was going to help. Yeah. And I think what other country is doing that, and along the Sahara Desert, they're trying

to build a similar, like they're calling it a green wall. Right. And there's a German company, actually it's not a company, they're out of Bremen University. I love this one. They figured out that if you take coffee sacks, like jute sacks, fill them with this kind of gel that can hold like a thousand times its weight in water or something like that. Seeds, compost, and... Sort of like a seed bomb.

It is. It's like a huge seed bomb. You can drop them out around the desert. So awesome. And they will, or at least a semi-arid region, and they will take root after just a few rainfalls. You can also put them in between trees and just leave the trees. And those trees will grow. I think they had an 80% success rate with the type of holly tree that they were trying

to grow. You can plant two of them and then put one of these bags in between them. Yeah, that's awesome. The other thing I thought was cool in the article was that the writer talked a little bit about sometimes the old traditional techniques, the ancient techniques. They were really on target with what they were doing and sometimes a modern way doesn't work as well. So in Spain, a British company has been renovating a 1,000-year-old Moorish irrigation system.

How cool is that? It's just cool that there's a 1,000-year-old irrigation system still around. Chuck, unless you feel like going to China or Sub-Saharan Africa and plant trees, there's not a lot you could do is like a stuff you should know, listen to, right? Except... Or is there? Yeah. One of the key ways of preventing desertification or slowing it, I guess, is encouraging in

indigenous societies to look for alternative means of sustaining themselves, I guess. Yeah, besides farming and agriculture. Right. There's things like growing herbs and things you can make oil extracts from and using them in soaps and stuff like that. So I guess if you wanted to do something here in the States or in Norway, you would maybe kind of look for something like that and start buying them en masse online. Does Emily sell those and love your mama?

Well, she sells her own soaps, but she doesn't. Does she use oils from the Gobi or anything? No, she tries to buy local, actually. Right on. That's not local. No, it's not that local. I'm going to shame her for not shipping in her essential oils from the Gobi desert. You got anything else on desertification?

Yeah, just if you want to read a little bit more on how you can participate or at least support and write letters, that kind of thing. The UN has a cool site, the United Nations Convention to Combat Desertification, and that is unccd.int. Nice. And you can click on action programs, and that's programs spelled with two M's and an E. Yeah, British.

They're silly that way. Sure. So it's pretty cool. You can click on action programs, and they have it. There isn't one action program because it's got to be very specific to the land. So you click on that, and you can go to Africa, and you can go to a subregion of Botswana and find out, like, you can download a PDF to see exactly what they're trying to do. So it's kind of cool just to educate yourself.

Or you can start collecting jute coffee bags and mail them to Bremen University. Yeah, seed pumps. So here you go. If you want to know more about desertification, arguably the greatest crisis humanity faces right now, you can type that word in, remember just one s, in the handysearchbar at House The First dot com, which means it's time for a listener mail. Indeed, Josh. I'm going to call this those crazy, wacky Aussies.

Okay. We have a lot of Aussie listeners. We hear from them quite a bit, and they're wacky people, and we need to make it down there at some point. Okay. Although I don't think you could ever stomach that flight, could you? I'm going to Japan. That's 14 hours.

Good luck. Yeah. This comes from Chris from Australia. I listen to your podcast all the time. I'm sure it's a clinical addiction, and I thought you needed to know about Cowpat Lotto. You know what a cowpat is? It's poop. Yeah.

Cowpie. Cowpoop. Cowpat Lotto is recognized, but certainly not common event in rural Australia, where a paddock is plotted into sections. I don't know what you would call it. I don't know. An area of land. Maybe you call it a paddock.

That's what it says. That's what I've always called it. So they split it into sections. This is all done on paper, like a Cartesian coordinate. Gamblers will bet their money on a particular portion of said paddock. When it's decided that it's time to get on with the game, a farm animal, traditionally bovine, you know what's coming, is thrown in the paddock. Gamblers and other locals then sit around eating and drinking and generally making merry,

and wait for said bovine to take a crap. Wow. So, when the aforementioned cow has taken his poo poo, its coordinates are taken and the winner is whoever's plot the poo poo has landed in, obviously. Prizes, I don't know. Maybe the money, maybe they wait for a second and third prize, although this would indicate an unhealthy cow that keeps going. And maybe they get a turkey or a meat tray or a slab of beer or something.

That's where I get confused. Wait, a slab of beer? Yeah. Or is that a case? Maybe. It's Australian for cakes. Right. Anyways, generally used as a fundraiser, like a local raffle, so it's like a fundraising

thing. And she said there's like ladies having bake sales and the guys are all sitting around getting hammered, basically. Oh yeah, it's Australia. Generally it's a great excuse for a suckmore, and that is an Australian synonym for a shindig, a hoot nanny, a party, or a booze up, they call it a suckmore. Okay. So, that's from Chris, Australia, red hair.

Nice, thanks, Chris. So now we know about desertification and suckmores. Yes. If you have an interesting term you want to introduce Chuck and I too, Chuck and me too, one of those two, send it an email to stuffpodcastathowstuffworks.com. For more on this and thousands of other topics, visit howstuffworks.com. Want more howstuffworks? Check out our blogs on the howstuffworks.com homepage.

Brought to you by the reinvented 2012 Camry. It's ready, are you? You're ready to travel in 2023, and since 1981, Gate One Travel has been providing more of the world for less. Let Gate One handle the planning for you with affordable escorted tours and European River Cruises. And right now, through January 30th, use promo code HEART20 to receive 20% off your tour. That's promo code HEART20 through January 30th.

Visit GateOneTravel.com for more information or to book your tour. That's GateTheNumberOneTravel.com. Once again, use promo code HEART20 through January 30th to receive 20% off your 2023 trip. When Las Vegas welcomes you to Awakening, a new theatrical experience created by award-winning artists enriched by spectacular sound, meet colorful characters, and journey with them through wondrous realms. Experience Awakening.

Tickets at Awakening.com.