Desert threats can have wide-ranging impacts. Here’s what to know.
Over a billion people live in drylands, making desert threats a global issue.
Desert threats come from many sources—some may even be surprising. One of the biggest threats to desert environments is global warming.
It’s hard to imagine that global warming would have much effect on the world’s already hot and dry deserts. But even small changes in temperature or precipitation could drastically impact desert plants and animals. In some cases, global warming is predicted to increase desert lands, which already cover a fifth of Earth’s land area.
Desert ecosystem
There are deserts on every continent, comprising roughly a fifth of the planet’s land mass. The four main types of deserts include hot and dry deserts, cold deserts, coastal deserts, and semiarid deserts.
The Sahara is likely the most famous hot and dry desert, where temperatures can soar to 122 degrees Fahrenheit. In stark contrast, cold deserts like those of the Arctic and Antarctic are some of the world’s most frigid places.
(Saharan dust is bad for health. But it’s also crucial to Earth’s biology and climate.)
Coastal deserts, like South America’s Atacama Desert, are located along western edges of continents. Despite their proximity to water, these areas remain dry because the cold air from the ocean is unable to retain moisture before it reaches land. Semiarid deserts, such as Great Basin National Park in the United States, receive more rainfall than others.
These harsh environments may seem barren, but they’re actually biologically rich. They support a wide variety of flora and fauna, such as scurrying beetles in the Namib desert and soaring saguaro cacti in southwestern U.S.
(The surprising tricks cacti use to survive the harshest climates on Earth)
Deserts are important to humans too. More than a billion people live in greater drylands. For many, deserts can be a source of food and resources. The dry environment is also ideal for preserving archaeological artifacts and fossils. They can also help prevent damaging sandstorms through biocrust, the top layer of soil containing microorganisms that keep the soil intact.
(How to dig up 55 tons of dinosaur bones from the world’s fiercest desert)
Desert threats
Global warming is increasing the incidence of drought, which dries up water holes. Higher temperatures may produce an increasing number of wildfires that alter desert areas by eliminating slow-growing trees and shrubs and replacing them with fast-growing grasses.
Irrigation used for agriculture may in the long term lead to salt levels in the soil that become too high to support plants. Grazing animals can destroy many desert animals and plants. Potassium cyanide used in gold mining may poison wildlife.
(What can save the desert’s most tenacious birds? Tiny underground apartments.)
Off-road vehicles, when used irresponsibly, can cause irreparable damage to desert habitats. Oil and gas production may disrupt sensitive habitat. And nuclear waste may be dumped in deserts, which have also been used as nuclear testing grounds.
Human activities such as firewood gathering and the grazing of animals are converting semiarid regions into deserts, a process known as desertification. Population growth and greater demand for land are serious obstacles in the effort to combat this problem.
(They planted a forest at the edge of the desert. From there it got complicated.)
Solutions
Despite these challenges, there are ways to preserve deserts in the world. We can more efficiently use existing water resources and better control salinization to improve arid lands, find new ways to rotate crops to protect the fragile soil, and plant sand-fixing bushes and trees.
Planting leguminous plants, which extract nitrogen from the air and lock it in the ground, can help restore soil fertility, while digging artificial grooves in the ground can help retain rainfall and trap windblown seeds.
Tourism and recreation is another key component. Designating trails and roadways can help prevent travelers from damaging the fragile biocrust, an often overlooked desert threat.
