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Saving Canada's only desert
- cperciva 10y agoIn 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.
- legulere 10y ago> by the Okanagan Desert, a semi-arid region aren't deserts defined by being arid regions?
- steve19 10y agoYou 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
- Fricken 10y agoThe whole tundra is a desert. Everything north of the arctic circle is a desert.
- cpach 10y ago”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/
- ommunist 10y agoTundra is another kind of landscape, strictly speaking. Ever been there? It is full of life! Desert is arid, tundra is not.
- gambiting 10y agoNot 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.
- emilyfm 10y agoThat's more of a dustbowl caused by deforestation - doesn't have the arid (or semi-arid) climate of a true desert. The Osoyoos "desert" isn't really arid enough, either. Deserts don't have to look like sand dunes, they are any area with a low rainfall. Sometimes the plants that are adapted are virtually a forest, but it's still a desert. For example in the Baja California desert: https://mbgecologicalrestoration.files.wordpress.com/2015/03/21.jpg https://mbgecologicalrestoration.files.wordpress.com/2015/03...
- afarrell 10y agoWhy would you want to conserve that? Isn't reverse-desertification a good thing?
- gambiting 10y agoI guess it's because it's one of its kind, and it's a relatively small area - so it's worth keeping as a tourist attracting, if nothing else.
- Sanddancer 10y agoDesert 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.
- happyslobro 10y agoOur 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 10y agoSounds like some swaths in Saskatchewan. Even the badlands in Alberta has areas like that. I wonder what the distinctions are?
- randlet 10y agoI knew about the Okanogan but not Carcross. Looks like it's not a 'real' desert though[1] (too humid). [1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carcross_Desert https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carcross_Desert
- jccalhoun 10y agoAccording to wikipedia, neither of them are actually deserts. The Carcross Desert is really a sand dune and the Okanagan Desert is really a shrub-steppe.
- pipio21 10y agoThere 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.
- DennisP 10y agoThese are different sorts of desert. Canada's is a rare and fragile ecosystem, not a wasteland of lifeless dunes like the Sahara.
- ommunist 10y agoEver been in Sahara? It is far from being lifeless. Plenty of life there. And always was. Canada's 'rare and fragile' ecosystem is just a PR pont for Lael's Parrott attempt to get finance for another bogus 'research'.
- ommunist 10y agoDude, there have been times Mediterranean Sea was all salt marche, all of it! Do not worry. Wait 2 mln years and see it changing.
- wodenokoto 10y agoCurrently 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
- oneloop 10y agoI 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)
- kuschku 10y agoWell, there are two movements there: One, to conserve current state of nature because it is worth something - see UNESCO Natural Reserves, etc Two, because profits would be threatened by change. (Look at the constant work to keep the island Sylt from moving, for example)
- dogma1138 10y agoCountries at risk of losing 20-30% or more of their arable land over the next decades are not threatened by reduced profits they are threatened by famine, starvation and huge population shifts. But this has nothing to do with preservation efforts, if anything preserving dry subhumid and semi-arid natural habitats can prove to be a good barrier to prevent further desertification countries like Israel and Spain have been doing quite a bit of work in those areas. Wanting to preserve an existing natural environment and habitat to many species is not antithetical to not wanting to lose arable land to needless man caused or at least accelerated desertification.
- ommunist 10y agoIs this claim based on any evidence or research? "Countries at risk of losing 20-30% or more of their arable land over the next decades are not threatened by reduced profits they are threatened by famine, starvation and huge population shifts." I say - that is bullshit. Belarus lost more than 20% of arable land and around 30% of forest land after Chernobyl accident in 1986. It suffered literal hell in social sphere after the USSR was ruined by its elites in 1991. But just 20 years later, by imposing special 17% tax on all businesses that was used to recover arable lands and forest lands from radionuclide contamination, balanced social policy and successful research in agriculture, it is doing just fine! It is HOW you deal with loss of arable land that matters. 2008 - Syria. They stupidly dug deeper wells until exhausting their precious ground waters to nothing. Result - 2 mln former farmers filled favelas of large Syrian cities. At the same time, same area, same problem - Israel invested into desalination tech and plants and successfully kept its agriculture running. It is not lost per se that causes famine and social shifts, it is right or wrong policy of the society that does it. We are humans - we can change things. But not 'saving deserts' or 'save beavers'. We are damn good at saving ourselves when we are together. Like Jews.
- mabbo 10y agoThe way things are going, they could probably introduce the threatened species to eastern Ontario, which is slowly becoming a desert it seems.
- haloboy777 10y agoI thought this was about maple syrup. :/ Sorry for my ignorance.
- byron_fast 10y agoNot sure why the Carberry desert doesn't qualify as a desert: https://www.tripadvisor.ca/Attraction_Review-g1871864-d501147-Reviews-Carberry_Spirit_Sands_Desert-Carberry_Manitoba.html https://www.tripadvisor.ca/Attraction_Review-g1871864-d50114... I was under the impression it holds the largest piece of "soft desert" in Canada, but maybe that's wrong.
- gwent 10y ago"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.
- ommunist 10y agoInteresting, why this main stakeholder in this "desert issue" removed their financial reports from their website? http://vpfinance.ubc.ca/reporting/ http://vpfinance.ubc.ca/reporting/ So the link about budget of this respected institution from http://www.ubc.ca/about/ http://www.ubc.ca/about/ is dead! Very suspicious. So who this Lael Parrott is? https://www.thesolutionsjournal.com/author/lael-parrott-2/ https://www.thesolutionsjournal.com/author/lael-parrott-2/ Famous in modelling ancient Maya ecological footprint. Professor of Sustainability. Are you god damn serious about giving any credit to this kind of 'research'?
- Animats 10y agoThat 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.