Forest fight
Landforms like mountains separate deserts from the
surrounding less arid areas. In some areas, the desert
borders gradually change to a more humid environment.
These transition zones have very fragile ecosystems. The
degradation of lands in these arid, semi-arid, and dry subhumid
areas is called Desertification.
Then again, some researchers at Duke University
believe we need more than just trees to fight global
warming. To prove this, they bathed plots of North
Carolina pine trees in extra carbon dioxide every day
for 10 years and found that while the trees grew in
size, the amount of carbon they absorbed depended
on the amount of water and nutrients they received.
For them, the best way to control climate change is by
reducing one’s carbon footprint, not by planting trees.
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Double-sided sword
Earth might use a solar shield to protect itself from
climate change. Solar shields reflect some of the Sun's
radiation back into space thereby cooling the climate.
There are proposals to inject reflective aerosols into the
stratosphere, deploying space-based
solar reflectors and large-scale
cloud seeding. The most
talked- about is a
sulphur shield.
It is inspired
by large
volcanic eruptions
that blast sulphate
particles into the
stratosphere, which
act as a shield. For
instance, the 1991
Mount Pinatubo eruption
in the Philippines, cooled
Earth by a few tenths of a
degree for several years! Researchers say that this kind
of geoengineering is a quick-fix solution to climate
change, and a last-minute resort.
On the other hand, some researchers like Kevin
Trenberth and Aiguo Dai of the National Center for
Atmospheric Research in Colorado believe that sulphur
sun shield is not a solution at all. They have shown
that it may considerably reduce rainfall, causing
catastrophic drought. They analysed precipitation and
continental run-off after the same eruption of Mount
Pinatubo, and found that there was a marked decrease
in rainfall and run-off. So the shield might have ruinous
effects on the planet’s water cycle, they contend. |
