How beautiful our planet Earth is! These are endless steppes and mountain peaks, powerful waterfalls and springs gushing from underground, icebergs and sand dunes, impenetrable taiga and birch groves. We are surrounded by a huge world of living beings: animals, microorganisms. We love to listen to the trill of a nightingale and the chirping of a grasshopper, watch the flight of a butterfly, and admire the grace of swans. We are delighted by the golden outfit of autumn, snow-covered trees, bright green foliage on a young birch tree, sunrises and sunsets, a rainbow in the sky. But all this may soon disappear!
We often hear: “Man is the king of nature.” But the king must think about his people, take care of them. And the man himself destroys the house in which he lives. He behaves like a small child who does not understand anything and destroys everything around him. Over the past 200 years, the area of ​​forests, which are the lungs of the planet, has halved. The tropical forests of America and Africa are being destroyed. Illegal tree cutting and forest fires cause enormous harm. What about illegal trade in rare animals and poaching?! Man mindlessly influences the world around him: he drains the seas, destroys mountains, turns back rivers, invents new types of weapons, and wages wars. And this list is endless.
One day I came across a note that said that every hour three species of animals disappear from the face of the Earth, and a quarter of all species of flora and fauna of our planet will cease to exist in the near future. That is, while I am writing this essay, three species of animals will irrevocably disappear from the face of the Earth, and our descendants will study them from the Black Book! In the near future, scary science fiction films where the Earth turns into a desert could become a reality?
We are still paying with our health for the benefits of civilization. If people continue to destroy all living things, the world will perish. After all, in nature everything is interconnected! We all understand that planet Earth is in danger. She asks for help, asks to think about the descendants. The planet is screaming at us about this with its environmental disasters, earthquakes, and natural disasters!
We must understand that life on Earth depends on each of us. People, come to your senses before it's too late!!!
And I would like to end my short essay with an ancient and wise parable.
A long time ago, in an ancient city there lived a Master, surrounded by disciples. The most capable of them once thought: “Is there a question that our Master could not answer?” He went to a flowering meadow, caught the most beautiful butterfly and hid it between his palms. The student approached the Master and asked:
- Tell me, what kind of butterfly is in my hands: alive or dead?
He held the butterfly tightly in his closed palms and was ready at any moment to squeeze them for the sake of his truth.
Without looking at the student’s hands, the Master answered:
- All in your hands.

The Earth is called the blue planet because most of its surface is occupied by water. Mostly these are oceans. Let us imagine now that one fine day all of them, for one reason or another, would evaporate... What would be the consequences? It seems that they will not please anyone, because without water it is difficult even to simply survive.

Will the Flood start in New York?

Turned to dust...

The primary function is to absorb and distribute solar radiation. If they disappeared, the equator would turn into hell, but the poles would not receive light and heat at all... Currents carry warm tropical waters towards the north and south, and cold water back to the equator. Thanks to the presence of oceans, the temperature on Earth is maintained quite suitable for life.

In addition, the oceans support the water cycle: water from the seas evaporates upward and forms clouds, from which precipitation then falls. Warm air at the equator is replaced by cold air, and heat is evenly distributed throughout the planet. Of course, somewhere it is warmer, somewhere it is cooler, but it is thanks to the presence of oceans that we have gardens.

So let's say that all the oceans suddenly turned to dust. But the dust turned out to be wet enough to give us a chance of survival.

The disappearance of the oceans will not lead to the complete disappearance of water on the planet. What will remain are lakes, rivers, groundwater, as well as glaciers, ice caps and permafrost, concentrated mainly in Antarctica and making up 68.7 percent of all fresh water. This is about 3.5 percent of the water volume that we have now.

They account for a total of 96.5 percent. Do you feel the difference? The remaining amount will not be enough for a full water cycle in nature, even if we manage to melt the ice caps at the poles. It will rain less often...

Shall we move to Antarctica?

For some time, however, humanity will still be able to exist in such conditions. With access to groundwater, we will be able to build hydroponic farms. But on the surface, trees and plants will dry out, and animals will die. Due to constant droughts, the continents will be engulfed in fires and global warming will accelerate.

The equator will become hot, it will be impossible to live there. Greenhouse gases will keep solar energy close to the earth. At night it will, of course, be somewhat colder than during the day, but the average temperature on Earth will reach 67 degrees Celsius. Most living organisms, even those resistant to high temperatures, will not be able to exist in such conditions.

People will most likely begin to migrate en masse to the southern hemisphere of the planet, because there it will be possible to extract water from underground Antarctic ice. However, Antarctica will not be so easy to get to. The continent will be a flooded wasteland, devoid of any resources necessary for life - such as roads, mines or visible food sources. Many simply may not wait to create the infrastructure necessary to exist in Antarctica. Those who still wait for this day will only be able to live underground.

But staying in underground bunkers does not guarantee a long and high-quality life on a planet devoid of oceans. The Earth's atmosphere will gradually lose oxygen, but it is needed underground too. The temperature will also gradually begin to rise. Sooner or later, all life on the planet will die out, with the exception of small colonies of chemosynthetic bacteria that will be hidden underground near hot springs.

Fate of Mars

Has such a scenario ever happened before? Maybe. There is a theory that oceans once existed, which means that life similar to ours could exist.

According to most scientists, water was still present on the Red Planet. True, until recently it was not clear why in the lowlands of the northern hemisphere, compared to the southern, there are so few phyllosilicates - mineral rocks that, as a rule, form at the bottom of reservoirs.

Several years ago we managed to clarify this issue. The construction of climatic and geochemical models of Mars showed that if there was an ocean on the planet, then part of its surface was covered with ice. Additionally, topographic features along the edges of the proposed ocean basin are consistent with the presence of large glaciers in the area. Researchers believe that it was the low temperature and ice cover that prevented the formation of layered silicates, characteristic of marine sediments, at the bottom of the reservoir.

Now Mars is a waterless desert. If water is present there, it will be in very small quantities and, most likely, only in the form of ice. But Mars is older than Earth... Will the same fate await our planet? Probably not anytime soon. But no one can vouch for what will happen in millions of years.

While humanity dreams of gardens on Mars, deserts are inexorably conquering the Earth. In Africa, for example, every day about 100 square kilometers of land turns into dust, and in just a week and a half - an area equal in size to Moscow. By 2025, a third of the meadows and arable land on our planet will become desert, which means that no more, no less, one hundred and fifty million people will have to look for a new refuge!

Alms instead of harvest

“Deserts are a creeping disaster,” says New York University professor Michael Goldsmith. - Entire countries may soon become uninhabitable. Soil destruction is happening faster every year, and man is to blame for this, of course: in the entire history of civilization, we have destroyed about two billion hectares of land!”

According to UN experts, erosion threatens 3.6 billion hectares of land in more than 110 countries. Every year we irreversibly lose about 10 million hectares of arable land and pastures. The top fertile layer of the earth is washed away by water or carried away by the wind.

And it’s not just about the fact that forests are being cut down, swamps are being dried out, as a result of which the ecological balance is disrupted and the area of ​​fertile soils is narrowing. We even conduct agriculture in a completely barbaric manner. Back in the middle of the last century, in the African Sahel - on lands adjacent to the Sahara - a field was cultivated for two to three years, and then abandoned for almost twenty years so that the soil fertility was restored. However, the population grew rapidly, and the land was not allowed to remain empty. A race began in a vicious circle: the “non-resting” soil was depleted, crops fell, peasants plowed up pasture lands - and after a while they also turned into desert. As a result, both people and livestock had nothing to eat - and the peasants, abandoning their farms, moved to the cities.

Instead of harvests, they now rely on humanitarian aid.

By the beginning of the 21st century, according to the UN, the number of “environmental refugees” reached 22 million people. In fifty years, about a billion people will be forced to move to other countries, which is fraught with a humanitarian catastrophe.

Goats ate the Mediterranean

Man also has assistants who help him turn the earth into a desert. About nine thousand years ago, people domesticated the wild goat, from which the domestic artiodactyl was bred. Now there are about fifty varieties of this cute animal in the world - about 400 million animals in total. Most of them are in Turkey.
For centuries, breeders have been concerned not with the goat's diet, but with increasing the amount of fluff from which the well-known Kashmir scarves and Orenburg shawls are made. Goatskin is also highly prized. We're not even talking about meat, how healthy goat's milk is, and what wonderful cheese it makes.

However, excessive numbers of artiodactyls cause enormous harm. The reason for this is the incredible gluttony of animals. Picky goats always have an excellent appetite, and thanks to a very well-developed vestibular apparatus, they climb onto the roofs of houses, trees, and high rocks in search of food. At the same time, the “climbers” eat almost everything around them - even tree trunks and roots, leaving bare ground.

According to scientists, at one time goats destroyed not only grass cover, but also forests in the south of Spain, Turkey, Syria, Lebanon, Palestine - deserts now lie there. In this regard, the expression appeared: goats ate the Mediterranean.
About forty years ago, a worldwide program to combat the dominance of goats was even adopted. Cities and villages in Cyprus, Spain, and Venezuela were decorated with slogans: “Even a single goat left free represents a national danger.”

Salt of the earth

But still, the main causes of erosion are unacceptable agricultural methods and destructive practices of watering the land, which results in “salt disease.” Its first sign is the appearance of salt-tolerant weeds. Gradually, cultivated plants begin to wither and their productivity decreases. And now grains of salt are already glistening, and soon the field is covered with a white crust. The wind completes the destruction of the arable land by sweeping away the top layer of soil. So the land turns into a desert.

Today, many countries with arid climates suffer from this problem - India, China, Iraq, Pakistan. In Australia, the annual damage caused by this scourge is estimated at three hundred million dollars. And in Europe, according to the EU, almost four million hectares of arable land are highly saline. To remove excess salt, most often it is enough to establish normal soil drainage. In third world countries they prefer not to spend money on this.

Biotechnology can partially solve the problem. Biologists Eduardo Blumwald and Zhang Hongxia from the University of California and Toronto have shown that plants can be made insensitive to salt through genetic manipulation alone. In their experiments, they introduced a gene isolated from weeds into ordinary tomatoes. After this, the plants grew normally, even when they were watered with water that contained 50 times more salt than seawater. The vegetables themselves did not taste salty. If it is possible to make other cultivated plants, for example, cereals, insensitive to salt, then it will be possible to sow saline lands with them. Whether this will help solve the problem in the future, time will tell.

UNEP (United Nations Environment Programme) experts estimate that $25 billion is required annually to combat soil erosion. However, there are no people willing to pay yet.

Mountain without snow cap

Global warming also contributes to the onset of deserts. As you know, every ten years the average air temperature on Earth rises by about 1°C. This means that moisture evaporation increases.

In addition, due to global warming, glaciers and snow located on mountain peaks are melting at a catastrophic rate. Thus, for the first time in 11 thousand years, Kilimanjaro, the highest mountain in Africa, was left without a snow cap. Scientists assumed that the melting of this glacier was possible, but according to their forecasts it should have happened in fifteen years.

Kilimanjaro, whose height is slightly less than six kilometers, is located almost at the equator. The white cap has always been considered an integral part of the Tanzanian landscape and has attracted tourists. However, the glacier was not only a tourist attraction, but also a source of fresh water for the inhabitants of the country. If Kilimanjaro remains without a “cap” in the future, Tanzanians will have to look for a new place of residence.

Scientists note that the melting of Himalayan ice has sharply accelerated in recent years. Because of this, many areas of China, India and Nepal may be left without fresh water. Deprived of water, the fields there will quickly turn into desert.

For the same reason, in half a century, the “all-Russian health resort” that Turkey has recently become may turn into a lifeless space. Scientists from the local Environmental Research Council came to such disappointing conclusions.

“Our research is based on an analysis of climate change data over the past few centuries. In particular, we created computer models demonstrating what will happen to the glaciers in half a century,” says Okkes Kesici, a professor at Gaziantep University. “All the possible consequences of global warming turned out to be disappointing.”

According to the professor, climate change directly affects the rate of melting of snow caps in eastern Turkey. 97 percent of them have already disappeared. Even the Aladag ridge, which fed Lake Van, the largest in the country, lost its glaciers. Because of this, most species of flora and fauna will soon disappear.

Scientists have come to a disappointing conclusion: Türkiye is gradually entering the “desert belt.” If measures are not taken, the landscape of the Asia Minor Peninsula will resemble the Sahara...

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Will the Earth become a desert?

The journalist stayed at the hotel. In the morning I noticed a yellow layer of sand on the windowsill.

There is a desert right behind the village,” a local resident explained to him. - When the wind blows, close all the windows. It was so difficult to get used to this... I remember that where the sands are now, there was waist-deep grass.

The car had to be pushed: the road was blocked by a sandy “snowdrift” - a dune - that had accumulated overnight.

The hot wind hurts your face with tiny grains of sand. It doesn’t let you forget for a minute: the desert is coming.

Where is all this happening? In the south of our country, in the so-called Black Lands. Black... Did the people who gave this name to this region a long time ago foresee this misfortune? No, that's not the point. In winter there is usually no snow here, and the area seems black without it. And now the Black Lands have become the victim of a terrible disaster: desertification.

What is desertification? This is the gradual transformation of dry lands into deserts. Like rust on the surface of metal, the desert is growing, expanding its borders, capturing more and more new areas. Over the past 50 years, an area equal to half of South America has become barren deserts around the world. 1/5 of the Earth's total landmass is now on the verge of desertification, in more than 100 countries around the world. The African Sahara Desert, for example, moves southward by up to 10 km every year! Why does desertification occur? To answer this question, let's return to the Black Lands.

The local pastures have fed flocks of sheep for centuries. People knew: the layer of fertile soil here is very thin, underneath there is sand. Therefore, the land cannot be plowed here. And there shouldn’t be too many livestock. In addition, you cannot graze it in the same places all year round, so that the grasses that hold the soil together are not eaten and trampled by domestic animals. Violate these conditions, and the sand will break out of centuries-old captivity. There were rich pastures - there will be a meager desert.

In these parts to this day, no trouble would have happened if people had not decided to ignore the laws of nature. Let's start plowing the land! And they bred so many sheep that, willy-nilly, they had to graze them all year round on the same pastures.

Yes, with the plowing of the land they received a certain amount of watermelons, corn, wheat, and barley. But the thin layer of soil quickly collapsed. The sand became the master here. And people plowed up a new plot.

Yes, they got meat and wool from sheep. But the places where it was still possible to graze them became fewer and fewer. People increased the number of sheep from year to year! The unfortunate animals, thin and emaciated, ate everything that was still growing, and hundreds of thousands died of hunger.

So why does desertification occur? The example of the Black Lands and observations of scientists in other areas of the world show that most often people themselves are to blame for this. Plowing of land and excessive grazing of livestock play a major role in this.

The consequences of desertification in environmental and economic terms are very significant and almost always negative. Agricultural productivity decreases, the diversity of species and the number of animals decreases, which, especially in poor countries, leads to even greater dependence on natural resources. Desertification limits the availability of basic ecosystem services and threatens human safety. It is an important obstacle to development, which is why the United Nations established World Day to Combat Desertification and Drought in 1995, and subsequently proclaimed 2006 as the International Year of Deserts and Desertification.

There are several other causes of desertification:

Water deficiency is a lack of water resources to meet the biological needs of crops and other types of vegetation for their normal growth and development, as well as environmental requirements to stabilize the development of ecological processes.

Drought is a long period of time of year with insufficient precipitation and elevated air temperatures.

Climate aridization is an increase in climate aridity due to an increase in air temperature, evaporation and a decrease in precipitation, i.e. increasing the air humidity deficit according to Torveit and reducing the humidity coefficient.

Deforestation is the denudation of areas for the growth and development of forest plantations, which led to disruption of snow retention and accumulation of moisture reserves from rainwater.

Overgrazing of livestock is the denudation or thinning of vegetation in pasture areas due to an increase in the number of livestock heads compared to the standard. Denudation or thinning of pasture areas leads to a sharp decrease in soil moisture reserves formed under the influence of scanty atmospheric precipitation in the desert.

Biological death is the necrosis of the plant world due to a sharp disruption of their need for water and an increase in harmful toxic substances in the soil and atmosphere.

Loss of fertility. Most often it occurs due to irrational and improper management of agricultural crops due to severe salinization and flooding of land with poor drainage of the territory. Desertification under the influence of loss of fertility of irrigated lands is most characteristic of irrigated lands located in river delta regions.

By understanding the causes of desertification, we can decide how to stop it, or at least slow it down. It is very difficult, but possible.

• 1. It is necessary to stop plowing land in areas experiencing desertification.
• 2. It is necessary to restore order in animal husbandry. Keep as many sheep as the remaining pastures can support. Move the animals around so that the pastures rest for part of the year.
• 3. It is necessary to sow herbs and plant forests so that a vegetation cover appears that protects the soil.

All this needs to be done in many parts of the world. But such work requires a lot of money, and there are many poor countries that cannot afford it. That is why it is necessary to unite the efforts of different states and all of humanity to jointly fight the advance of deserts.

Of course, becoming a true desert does not threaten the entire Earth. This is a problem in areas with arid climates. It seems to me that this environmental disaster can be considered a symbol of that. What is happening to the Earth now. People are devastating their planet. Doesn't air and water pollution bring disease and death to living things? Aren't growing landfills and quarries destroying fertile lands? Doesn't deforestation and extermination of plant and animal species make the planet lifeless? Isn’t any of us, mindlessly knocking over mushrooms or swatting innocent insects, uniting the environment? People cannot live in a ruined, destroyed natural home. There are 8 dead planets orbiting the sun, and only one is still alive. I urge everyone to save this life by doing everything you can for this.

environment desertification fertility aridization

These days, dreaming about traveling to other planets and galaxies has become a very common trend. But at the same time, we must not forget about what is happening to our home - planet Earth. Environmentalists are sounding the alarm, because on the Dark Continent, 100 square kilometers become dust every day. The question involuntarily arises: will the Earth turn into a desert?

Creeping deserts plus salty soil equal environmental disaster

The statistics are horrifying: in 10-11 days, territories that can be compared in area to the capital of the Russian Federation turn into dust. It is predicted that within a decade the desert will take over a third of the arable land. About 150 million people will be left without food.

Michael Goldsmith (professor at the University of New York) is seriously concerned about the problem of desert spread around the world. According to his forecasts, entire countries could turn into deserts in the coming decades. But humanity itself, which has been deliberately destroying the soil for thousands of years, bears full responsibility for what happened. The published data is also not encouraging: over all this time, people have transferred about 2 billion hectares of fertile land.

Therefore, the question “will the earth turn into a desert?” Scientists and people who care about our planet are increasingly asking questions.

UN experts published similar data: erosion affected 3.6 billion hectares of land. This is the territory of more than 110 countries. Every year, 10 million hectares of arable land lose their properties due to the destruction of the fertile layer. It is either washed away by water or carried away by the winds.

The main reasons for the destruction of fertile soils:

• drying out of swamps, deforestation, changes in river beds, which leads to disruption of the ecological balance of the planet,
• improper farming practices, which do not allow the soil to “walk” and build up a fertile sphere.

Previously, on agricultural lands adjacent to the largest desert in the world, crops were grown for 2-3 years in a row, and then for 20 years they allowed the soil to “walk” and restore its fertile properties. With the world's population growing, the possibility of not using land for 2 decades seems mythical. But the situation is paradoxical: people use the land every year, deplete it, and when the harvests no longer meet their expectations, they simply give up cultivation and move to big cities. Here they are waiting not for the harvests produced by their own labor, but for packages of humanitarian aid.

“The UN provides data: by the beginning of this century there were 22 million such migrants. The forecasts are also unpleasant: in half a century, a billion people on the planet will be wandering around in search of humanitarian aid.”

An equally serious problem is the pollution of fertile lands with salt. This happens due to incorrect farming methods, due to incorrect irrigation and fertilization methods. And the consequences are not long in coming. Soil enriched with salts allows weeds to mutate and adapt to the chemical composition of the soil. This in turn leads to deterioration in crop yields. The wind blows out a fertile ball. And as a result, we have land erosion, which, without taking prompt and adequate measures, leads to the emergence of new deserts. Therefore, to the question “will the Earth turn into a desert?” the answer is drawn with virtually no options.

Nowadays, this problem is relevant for Iraq, India, China, Australia, and Pakistan. Europe is also not spared the issue of “salty” land. This is the problem with 4,000,000 hectares of arable land. To combat this disease you need high-quality and often expensive soil drainage. For which in many countries there is simply no money. Indeed, according to conservative estimates by the United Nations Environment Project (UNEP), an average of $25 billion is required every year to maintain arable land in a fertile condition.

Modern developments are also aimed at improving the condition of arable land. Eduardo Bloomwald (a professor at the University of California) and Zhang Hongxia (from Toronto) experimented with genetics. To do this, a weed gene was introduced into ordinary tomatoes that adapts to salty soil. The harvest was a great success and the fruits were not at all salty, although they were watered with salt water. If this technique is developed taking into account cereal crops, then the problem of salts in the soil will be solved.

Pets are putting the planet on the brink of survival

The partnership between humans and goats dates back about 9,000 years (when our great-grandfathers first domesticated the wild goat). Nowadays, domestic goats bred by farmers, there are about 400,000,000 of them on the planet. People often breed them because of:

• fluff, which subsequently goes into scarves and shawls,
• skins from which beautiful budget fur products are sewn,
• meat and milk are excellent food products.

But owners rarely think about the damage that their pet can bring to the planet. Goats are animals with a colossal appetite, capable of finding their own food by climbing onto roofs, hills, rocks, and trees. But the worst thing is that after the goat stays on these objects, bare soil is left. The work of goat mouths is the eaten cover of grass in Syria, Palestine, southern Spain, Lebanon, Cyprus, Turkey. Now there are vast deserts there.