How Desertification Affects People, Plants, and Animals
- More people in the drylands depend on their ecosystem than in any other ecosystem
- People depend on crops, livestock, and firewood which all need water
- The spread of deserts cause the herdsmen to give up their way of life and move
- Desertification has caused more deforestation
- Desertification affects ecological services like the availability of food and water
- It also affects natural processes like soil conservation
- Desertification stopped plant growth in the area
- While facing desertification people often try to use less productive land
- People will turn unsuitable land to farmland or move to different cities or countries
- This can lead to land degradation, unsustainable practices, and social or political problems
- Because of the stop of plant growth animals and people didn't have a source of food so there was a widespread of famine and death
- Desertification wiped out all clues to ancient civilization
- Desertification is causing sand dunes that are taking over homes in the Sahara
- The growth rate of the population in the Sahel is about 3% per year while the growth rate of food production is only about 2% per year (lbrown1432)
Solutions
- Improved ways of agriculture,land,and water management have cause a decrease in desertification over the years
- Trapping rainwater with earth mounds between rows of plants or rock walls built along hills
- You can arrange shallow ditches to trap rain water
- You can stop desertification by planting plant and shrubs in a checkerboard pattern
- Local solutions to desertification in the Sahel are for farmers to stabilize the environment themselves by intercropping edible perennials into their fields. Perennials act as anchors that stabilize the soil against wind and water erosion (lbrown1432).