Our World

In class on Wednesday, we did not have any major class discussions, however, there were a few comments/ideas that I had on some of the topics in our notes.
The first thing that I would like to talk about is desertification. I never really had an idea that this was going on until I read this segment of the book. However, after thinking about it more, I got an idea of a very small example of desertification that we can see here every day. If you ever go for a hike, you can often times notice that the path that you are walking on no longer has grass on it. It is down to a narrow path of bare dirt. This is because of the overuse of that particular area. It is the same thing that happens in the desertification of farming land, only on a much smaller scale. The overuse of an area can cause the vegetation in that area to no longer grow, leaving a section of barrant dirt/sand. If you are walking and a gust of wind blows, you can often times feel the dirt blowing and hitting your face. This is the same thing in large scale desertification. The sand blows farther into what was once known as farmland, leaving an even larger area barrant dessert.
You can even go further with the topic of desertification, and say that desertification will greatly effect a country's economy. With the loss of farm land each time desertification happens, that is that much less profit the country is seeing. If the land can't produce, the country cannot make money off of it. Furthermore, the reduced farming land also pushes farmers closer and closer to things like, tropical forests and woodlands. These bioregions have already seen some of the effects of desertification. Every day, portions of these forests are being cut down for farm land, and the numbers are growing larger as we speak.

posted by Anonymous @ 9/23/2006 09:44:00 AM