It is easy to list the worst disasters and witness some ongoing ones.
I certainly do not like it but I also know that full recovery is now in our control once the greed pushers have left the stage. Soils can be rebuilt quickly from some sand and clay and bio char and plenty of water and all inside of a generation.
Yet one must take pause when clearly stupid programs are continued in the face of abject failure. On the Buffalo Commons we are simply waiting for the Ogallala aquifer to run dry to eliminate all the stakeholders there. The same is true everywhere.
My key point is that soils can be regenerated quickly using biochar. This is not generally known or even properly understood by scientists.
Kevin F. Dennehy; U.S. Geological Survey - The High Plains Aquifer, located in the United States, is one of the largest freshwater aquifers in the world and is threatened by continued decline in water levels and deteriorating water quality. Understanding the physical and cultural features of this area is essential to assessing the factors that affect this groundwater resource. About 27% of the irrigated land in the United States overlies this aquifer, which yields about 30% of the nation's groundwater used for irrigation of crops including wheat, corn, sorghum, cotton, and alfalfa. In addition, the aquifer provides drinking water to 82% of the 2.3 million people who live within the aquifer boundary. The High Plains Aquifer has been significantly impacted by human activities. Groundwater withdrawals from the aquifer exceed recharge in many areas, resulting in substantial declines in groundwater level. Residents once believed that the aquifer was an unlimited resource of high-quality water, but they now face the prospect that much of the water may be gone in the near future. Also, agricultural chemicals are affecting the groundwater quality. Increasing concentrations of nitrate and salinity can first impair the use of water for public supply and then affect its suitability for irrigation. A variety of technical and institutional measures are currently being planned and implemented across the aquifer area in an attempt to sustain this groundwater resource for future generations. However, because groundwater withdrawals remain high and water quality impairments are becoming more commonplace, the sustainability of the High Plains Aquifer is uncertain.
Peak soil is no joke: Civilization’s foundation is eroding
BY Lester Brown
29 SEP 2010 9:13 AM
The thin layer of topsoil that covers the planet’s land surface is the foundation of civilization. This soil, typically 6 inches or so deep, was formed over long stretches of geological time as new soil formation exceeded the natural rate of erosion. But sometime within the last century, as human and livestock populations expanded, soil erosion began to exceed new soil formation over large areas.
This is not new. In 1938, Walter Lowdermilk, a senior official in the Soil Conservation Service of the USDA, traveled abroad to look at lands that had been cultivated for thousands of years, seeking to learn how these older civilizations had coped with soil erosion. He found that some had managed their land well, maintaining its fertility over long stretches of history, and were thriving. Others had failed to do so and left only remnants of their illustrious pasts.
In a section of his report titled "The Hundred Dead Cities," he described a site in northern
Wind and water erosion take a toll. The latter can be seen in the silting of reservoirs and in satellite photographs of muddy, silt-laden rivers flowing into the sea. Pakistan’s two large reservoirs, Mangla and Tarbela, which store Indus River water for the country’s vast irrigation network, are losing roughly 1 percent of their storage capacity each year as they fill with silt from deforested watersheds.
Ethiopia, a mountainous country with highly erodible soils, is losing close to 2 billion tons of topsoil a year, washed away by rain. This is one reason
Soil erosion from the deterioration of grasslands is widespread. The world’s steadily growing herds of cattle and flocks of sheep and goats forage on the two-fifths of the earth's land surface that is too dry, too steeply sloping, or not fertile enough to sustain crop production. This area supports most of the world’s 3.3 billion cattle, sheep, and goats, all ruminants with complex digestive systems that enable them to digest roughage, converting it into beef, mutton, and milk.
An estimated 200 million people make their living as pastoralists, tending cattle, sheep, and goats. Since most land is held in common in pastoral societies, overgrazing is difficult to control. As a result, half of the world’s grasslands are degraded. The problem is highly visible throughout Africa, the Middle East, Central Asia, and northwest
Nigeria, Africa's most populous country, is losing 351,000 hectares (867,000 acres) of rangeland and cropland to desertification each year. While
Iran, with 73 million people, illustrates the pressures facing the
Neighboring
Soil erosion often results from the demand-driven expansion of cultivation onto marginal land. Over the last century or so there were massive cropland expansions in two countries -- the
During the late 19th century, millions of Americans pushed westward, homesteading on the
The second major expansion came in the
A third massive cropland expansion is now taking place in the Brazilian Amazon Basin and in the cerrado, a savannah-like region bordering the basin on its south side. Land in the cerrado, like that in the U.S. and Soviet expansion, is vulnerable to soil erosion. This cropland expansion is pushing cattle ranchers into the Amazon forests, where ecologists are convinced that continuing to clear the area of trees will end in disaster. Reporter Geoffrey Lean, summarizing the findings of a 2006 Brazilian scientific symposium in London’s Independent, notes that the alternative to a rainforest in the Amazon would be “dry savannah at best, desert at worst.”
Civilization depends on fertile soils. Ultimately, the health of the people cannot be separated from the health of the land. Conserving and rebuilding soils will be covered in the next Plan B 4.0 Book Byte.
Adapted from Chapter 2, “Population Pressure: Land and Water” in Lester R. Brown, Plan B 4.0: Mobilizing to Save Civilization.
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