Product Code Database
Land restoration, which may include renaturalisation or rewilding, is the process of restoring land to a different or previous state with an intended purpose. That purpose can be a variety of things such as what follows: being safe for humans, plants, and animals; stabilizing ecological communities; cleaning up pollution; creating novel ecosystems; or restoring the land to a historical condition, for example how indigenous people managed the land.
Ecological destruction or degradation, to which land restoration serves as an antidote, is usually the consequence of human influence's intended or unintended consequences. This can include pollution, deforestation, salination, or species endangerment, among many more. Land restoration is not the same as land reclamation, where existing ecosystems are altered or destroyed to give way for cultivation or construction. Land restoration can enhance the supply of valuable ecosystem services that benefit people.
The first phase is fixating the soil to such extent that dune movement is ceased. This is done by grasses, and plants providing wind protection such as , and . Shelterbelts are wind protections composed of rows of trees, arranged perpendicular to the prevailing wind, while woodlots are more extensive areas of woodland. Desert reclamation
The second phase involves improving/enriching the soil by planting nitrogen-fixating plants and using the soil immediately to grow crops. Nitrogen fixating plants used include clover, yellow mustard, beans, etc., and food crops include wheat, barley, beans, peas, sweet potatoes, date, , limes, ficus, apricot, guava, tomato, certain , etc. Regardless of the cover crop used, the crops (not including any trees) are each year harvested and/or plowed into the soil (e.g. with clover). In addition, each year the plots are used for another type of crop (known as crop rotation) to prevent depleting the soil on specific trace elements.
A recent development is the Seawater Greenhouse and Seawater Forest. This proposal is to construct these devices on coastal deserts in order to create fresh water and grow food. The Sahara Project a new source of freshwater food and energy A similar approach is the Desert Rose concept. Desert Rose - Claverton Group Energy Conference, Bath October 2008 These approaches are of widespread applicability, since the relative costs of pumping large quantities of seawater inland are low.
Another related concept is ADRECS – a proposed system for rapidly delivering soil stabilisation and re-forestation techniques coupled with renewable energy generation.http://www.claverton-energy.com/download/320/
|
|
