Desertification Dbq Essay

Topic: How did economic, geographic, and social factors encourage the growth of slavery as an important part of the economy of the southern colonies between 1607 and 1775?

In his book, Cadillac Desert: The American West and Its Disappearing Water, Marc Reisner’s main thesis is to show the inefficiency, greed, and inherent difficulty in the American West’s never-ending struggle to turn its unwelcoming desert into a lush garden. One of his main sub-points is that the West is not meant to support millions of people. It has a wide range of geographic challenges throughout the entire region. Its inconsistency and diversity is a primary cause of its water problems. For example, Reisner notes that the West consists of “plains so arid that they could barely support bunchgrass; deserts that were fiercely hot and fiercely cold; streams that flooded a few weeks each year and went dry the rest; forests with trees so large it might take days to bring one down; . . . hail followed by drought followed by hail;” (23).

This causes the desertification and it also slows down progress for finding areas that can be medicine for certain diseases. Grasslands act as a big sponge, as they are able to absorb the rain that falls throughout the grassland. Because of this, there's fertile land, and abundance of nutrients for migrating wildlife. In south Africa, companies have put non-native trees in the grassland which is taking away nutrients from the area. In the Florida Everglades, they're only about 80 Florida Panthers left. The big problem that I notice is that we are able to make plenty of land for agriculture but not for people. In only three years, farmers in Zambia have created food security for 16,000 farmers. Glaciers are melting all run the world, however the speed of this has went up three times as much in the last 50

There is a saying that “Geography is destiny”. For early civilizations, geography was an obstacle when it came to survival. As people settled in permanent locations, they relied on the local geographical features to sustain themselves. As people relied on geography, it helped shape the development of early civilizations, such as to provide many natural barriers, trade routes, and fertile land. China, for example, was able to develop and prosper due to its natural barriers.

The soil commonly found is alkaline which allows the desert plants to grow and gain nutrients through the roots in the ground. the temperature allows for Predators to be able to hunt for longer stretches of time in cooler temperatures and often rest in the shade in preparation of hunting in the warmer temperatures. the sand dunes help to Prevent soil erosion by storing sand that replaces the eroded sand below with more sand so the total amount of sand in an area does not decrease.

In our increasingly globalized world, where the population grows by thousands each day, the needs of people are amplified. In arid countries/regions (i.e. Libya, the Western Sahara region), the lack of water and population growth, for example, are causing increasing problems between citizen and government. The citizen suffers and feels helpless because the government is not effective at doing its job of protecting its

The Sinai Peninsula, which occupies an area of 61,000 km2 or 6.1% of the surface area of Egypt, is very rich both in the number of species and the high percentage of endemics. Sinai Peninsula is floristically one of the richest of all phytogeographical regions of Egypt. In many of these plants, Bedouins find sources of nutrition, medicine and pasture. In the last ten years unmanaged human activities have threatened endemic and rare species resulting in disappearance of pastoral plant communities, and have caused an increased dominance of unpalatable plant species due to the herds of goats that graze the diffuse vegetation in the high mountains and Wadis (Moustafa, 1990).

Although animals living in the desert have had to evolve in order to adapt to the desert conditions, those conditions are very fragile. The desert may be a hard place for non-natives to survive, but the desert’s ecosystem is very sensitive and not easy to regenerate. “Development, off-highway vehicle use, livestock overgrazing, construction of roads and utilities, military training exercises, air pollution and the spread of non-native plant species have seriously altered the desert ecosystem over the last century” (Barton, 1999). These are the hazards by humans that are directly affecting the ecosystem in the desert. According to Barton (1999) the off-highway vehicle use, construction, overgrazing, and military usage damages the desert’s

A cruel way of destroying the desert fauna is hunting. People have driven some species to extinction by hunting the animals just for pure pleasure. And also for the pleasure of it are the plant and animal collectors. People are willing to pay enormous amounts of money for rare species of cacti or large lizards for pets, taking them out of their habitat and reducing their numbers dramatically.

There are a variety of causes held responsible for the water crisis in Africa. These causes have been taken from African’s control and desperately need to be solved. Climate change is one of the countless reasons that there is a high demand for water in Africa. An article entitled “Africa’s Water Crisis Deepens” written for the 2006 News Scientist, states that Drought, famine and spreading deserts have plagued Africa for the past 30 years. With the expansion of desertification, the process in which land becomes increasingly dry with little to no water resources, areas of land have dried out and are useless to humans due to the lack of rainfall on the African continent over the past several years.

Nearly everything that a human does is in response to the environment. Our lives are defined by what is around us and what we find in front of us, whether this means accepting, dealing with or changing it. This has been the pattern since primates first stood up and became Homo erectus, and has continued until we considered ourselves doubly wise. The shape of the land affected where humans moved. Weather was something with which to contend. Fire affected humans until they conquered it – and herein lies the core of the relationship. The earth affects humans, and humans affect it back, viewing characteristics and patterns as problems and challenges, and finding a solution.

Presently droughts occurring every two years and when it does rain only fractions of what the region is used to comes down because a rise in of this food prices, homelessness, diseases, social chaos is in full heat. One in every 3 people you see is dying from malnutrition.Feeding centers and medical supply demands are so high and the respond to get food and water there is not happening fast enough.If poor hygiene continues death will be the result.

Desertification is an environmental and socio-economic problem. Environmental justice is characterized by the equal sharing of risks and benefits, distributed equally without discrimination. The land affected falls in rural areas beyond the mainland which are primarily occupied by non-Han ethnic minorities. These areas include the autonomous regions of Inner Mongolia, Xinjiang, and Tibet, which have historically been oppressed. The social component of the problem creates a cycle in which “poverty exacerbates desertification, and in turn, desertification aggravates poverty.” The cycle will continue until the wellbeing of people living in desertified areas is considerably improved to the point where they no longer rely on degraded land for survival. Only then will they be able to limit their impact on desertified land. Chen and Tang further explain “For degraded land, withdrawal of farmlands and enclosing pastures in order to exclude grazing are undoubtedly the most effective ways to prevent further desertification. These measures would deprive local people of their sole livelihood.” Attempts to reduce desertification have neglected the human component of the problem.

Desertification is defined by Scott E Spoolman and G. Miller in their book Living in the Environment as “the conversion of rangeland, rain-fed cropland, or irrigated cropland to desert-like land with a drop of agricultural activity of 10% or more”. To put this as simple as possible desertification is turning usable soil into desert. Dissertation is hard to observe but over time

One of the greatest difficulties that arises when dealing with an environmental issue such as desertification on an international scale is the fact that its affects are not geographically universal. For instance, regions of Africa and Asia are highly susceptible to land degradation and its affects are often only apparent at the local level. As such, during early debates concerning desertification there was much reluctance coming from developed countries to recognize it as a global concern. Many developed countries, especially within Europe, argued that land degradation was a local problem that results from the “cumulative