Desertification in Romania (2020)(geographyrealm.com) |
Desertification in Romania (2020)(geographyrealm.com) |
[1] https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/d/db/%D0%A5%D...
[2] https://cdn.nwmgroups.hu/s/img/i/1801/20180108fulophazi-buck...
2. The Euphrates floodplain is still quite green, like the Nile's. It's not like the US midwest where you have thousands of square miles of grass, but you do have a strip of extremely reliably fertile land (and for civilization-building, reliable seasons are super important).
Deforestation is a common cause of desertification worldwide. Trees help to capture moisture from the air and bring it to ground. Cut them down, and the moist air blows past. Trees are commonly cleared for farmland, and then the farmland has to be abandoned when it gets too dry.
In the Amazon basin and along the northwest coast of North America, trees were the basis of productive agriculture, carefully chosen mixes of trees of different sizes and species. To this day the Amazon basin is dominated by tree species that were once cultivated throughout, supporting tens of millions until they were wiped out by smallpox and other pandemics. In North America, such tree gardens can still be found centuries after they were abandoned.
Also certain places, e.g, Israel, were actual forests just 10-12,000 years ago.
There is evidence of lush farms in what is now the Sahara desert and civilizations that existed there had significantly more resources.
Early Egyptians documented this as well. ...and the Carthaginians were likely the last holders of that fertile land before civilization moved north in the Roman Empire.
Global temperatures rose causing desertification along that entire latitude.
Language is great.
I would think that the the cause is complex but humans removing trees until they are gone is probably part of the problem.
Better stock up on turbans because there's no chance we can fix anything.
I remember two meters of snow, digging tunnels through it and such.
And I remember four distinct seasons. Now it's more like a long summer, a long autumn, and short spring and winter.
Are bordering countries like Serbia and Bulgaria affected by this? This can't be the only country with unsustainable agricultural practices, right?
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oleshky_Sands (Ukrainian and Russian wiki articles have more details)
[2] https://www.travelhouseuk.co.uk/news/destinations/visit-the-...
For some context, Romania has about the highest road fatalities per capita in the EU.
They wanted to cut the trees along the roads in France too for similar. They wanted to remove the trees up to a certain distance which I can't remember.
The issue is that whole forests are being removed. If they weren't, removing a bunch of trees along the roads for safety wouldn't make that big of a difference.
But trees in cities is a different beast, though, and I think it's criminal to remove those, especially in Romania where, thanks communism, there aren't that many trees to begin with.
The local climate is temperate.
You're right, of course, those in forests and those in the cities bring different benefits, but most people don't seem to care enough about either.
Trees alone do not help. There are a lot of tree farms which do not capture moisture and are prone to forest fires. We need forests with good ecosystems not tree plantations.
Wheat yields progressively fell as salt accumulated in the ground. They switched to barley until that crop failed too.
According to the book, almost all ancient agriculture was unsustainable. If not because of the irrigation, it was because plowing caused too much soil erosion. The only places that could get away with it long-term were Egypt and China, because of the flooding and lime replenished the soil.
I have no knowledge about the eastern portion of Egypt (Sinai?) being richer than the western one, afaik the wealth of Egypt was always centered around the nile and nile delta (even today). That's probably what the breadbasket refers to.