Summary
Then maybe it's easier to remember this summer's fire season when fires in the American West and Southwest forced the evacuation of more than 500,000 people and burned thousands of homes. It's a particularly frightening thought when you consider the fact that most of the land in the Southwest United States is arid or semiarid.
"We need to see how natural ecosystems are responding to changes in the global climate," Desert Research Institute scientist and project director Lynn Fenstermaker said. "In particular we are interested in how well certain ecosystems are going to be able to sequester [contain in the soil] the additional carbon that's being produced by fossil-fuel burning."Experiments like those at the Nevada Desert Research Center are necessary because some 40 percent of the Earth's land surface is arid or semi-arid, with more land becoming desert each year. This process-the degradation of formerly productive land, often caused by humans-is called desertification. If s already responsible for an unknown number of deaths. For example, according to U.S. Geological Survey documents, between 1968 and 1973 the desertification-caused Sahel drought in Africa led to the deaths of up to 250,000 people and the collapse of the agricultural bases of five countries.See the full content of this document
Extract
Desert Greenhouse
How will global warming affect the world's deserts? Scientists in Nevada predict potentially heartbreaking outcomes.
Imagine a future where hundreds of thousands of people in the more arid parts of the country flee wildfi...See the full content of this document
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