3 ms·

What if we do not flood it, but instead make circulate a lot of salt water in open-roofed canals (but with leak-proof floor and walls) crisscrossing the desert?

What if we do not flood it, but instead make circulate a lot of salt water in open-roofed canals (but with leak-proof floor and walls) crisscrossing the desert? Then the humidity would trigger rains and help grow a vegetation, and the salt residues would remain inside the canals. Then at some point the vegetation would self-maintain the necessary humidity level.

3-cheese-sundae 4y ago
Canals would silt up very fast. Also, I don't know about leak-proof water canals when humanity can't seem to make leak-proof sealed oil pipelines, and that's with significant financial incentive to do so.
filoeleven 4y ago
There are lots of ideas around for desert greening; see the linked article for a list. Canals are unlikely to work well, but seawater farming is kind of close to your proposal. It requires greenhouses to be built though, so I don’t know how well it scales. Years ago I read about a system that seemed successful. Ridges were built up at the desert’s edge, and salt-tolerant trees and shrubs were planted on hem to keep the ground stable. This change in microclimate promoted more greening in the valleys between, which increased overall moisture levels. Once this is established, more ridges can be constructed further out to repeat the process. It’s not an easy thing to search the web for, and I don’t recall how long it takes for one ridge to be productive, but I recall thinking it was shorter than I expected (still on the order of years, of course). https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Desert_greening https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Desert_greening
PeterisP 4y ago
> Then the humidity would trigger rains Not necessarily, given the weather conditions there it's quite plausible that all the evaporation would form clouds which would only rain elsewhere and not in that desert.

3 ms·

What if we do not flood it, but instead make circulate a lot of salt water in open-roofed canals (but with leak-proof floor and walls) crisscrossing the desert?

by henearkr 4y ago

3-cheese-sundae 4y ago
Canals would silt up very fast. Also, I don't know about leak-proof water canals when humanity can't seem to make leak-proof sealed oil pipelines, and that's with significant financial incentive to do so.
filoeleven 4y ago
There are lots of ideas around for desert greening; see the linked article for a list. Canals are unlikely to work well, but seawater farming is kind of close to your proposal. It requires greenhouses to be built though, so I don’t know how well it scales. Years ago I read about a system that seemed successful. Ridges were built up at the desert’s edge, and salt-tolerant trees and shrubs were planted on hem to keep the ground stable. This change in microclimate promoted more greening in the valleys between, which increased overall moisture levels. Once this is established, more ridges can be constructed further out to repeat the process. It’s not an easy thing to search the web for, and I don’t recall how long it takes for one ridge to be productive, but I recall thinking it was shorter than I expected (still on the order of years, of course). https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Desert_greening https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Desert_greening
PeterisP 4y ago
> Then the humidity would trigger rains Not necessarily, given the weather conditions there it's quite plausible that all the evaporation would form clouds which would only rain elsewhere and not in that desert.