California grows water intensive crops like almonds and manages to make money even if they are running low on water
Egypt has managed to plant trees in the desert using wastewater
61–70 of 123 posts
Re: Egypt has managed to plant trees in the desert using wastewater
#62It's not clear to me what the source of water is relative to the size of the forest, because IIUC, in dry regions like Egypt (and California, Israel, etc), unless you use drip-irrigation with targeted crops (which won't grow a forest), agriculture requires a huge amount of water compared to domestic water consumption, so the wastewater stream from the latter intuitively can't be nearly enough to support a forest. Per…
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Re: Egypt has managed to plant trees in the desert using wastewater
#63It's not clear to me what the source of water is relative to the size of the forest, because IIUC, in dry regions like Egypt (and California, Israel, etc), unless you use drip-irrigation with targeted crops (which won't grow a forest), agriculture requires a huge amount of water compared to domestic water consumption, so the wastewater stream from the latter intuitively can't be nearly enough to support a forest. Per…
Your water needs might drop significantly once the forest is established. Depending on the trees, the established canopy might drop the evaporative losses dramatically.
Maybe they emulate a canopy with some kind of tarp while the trees are growing?
Re: Egypt has managed to plant trees in the desert using wastewater
#64Looking at earth timelapse the whole area has been expanding for a while https://earthengine.google.com/timelapse#v=30.46781,31.89686...
Re: Egypt has managed to plant trees in the desert using wastewater
#65The UN's Forestry Department has a fact sheet here (pdf) with some annotated satellite pics showing the layout and species.
http://www.fao.org/forestry/35800-094f4eedb0c86a4a33be1a3d90...
Re: Egypt has managed to plant trees in the desert using wastewater
#66It's not clear to me what the source of water is relative to the size of the forest, because IIUC, in dry regions like Egypt (and California, Israel, etc), unless you use drip-irrigation with targeted crops (which won't grow a forest), agriculture requires a huge amount of water compared to domestic water consumption, so the wastewater stream from the latter intuitively can't be nearly enough to support a forest. Per…
Your water needs might drop significantly once the forest is established. Depending on the trees, the established canopy might drop the evaporative losses dramatically.
How much of a difference could that make?
Re: Egypt has managed to plant trees in the desert using wastewater
#67Less than 500 acres planted using sewege water from cities. The rest (planting millions of acres of forest) is just a wishlist and the article is short on details.
Israel already gets the majority of its water, including for irrigation, from desalination.[1] They achieve this through a combination of conserving and recycling water as well as very targeted irrigation of crops, along with new technology such as the Sorek desal plant. The second generation may be up and running by 2023 [2]. There's an interesting paper [3] about building 40,000 Sorek style plants to sequester exce…
I think there was some ideas of using it in concrete.
Surprised we can't just pipe it deeper and let it disperse slower.
Re: Egypt has managed to plant trees in the desert using wastewater
#68Central Park New York is 341 h, The Empire State Building has 25 ha
This project is 200 ha
That is 1.4km by 1.4km.
Not a small farm, not a large farm.
If it was real, obviously the Serapium Forest doesn't really exist outside of fantasy. As you can see from the map.
Re: Egypt has managed to plant trees in the desert using wastewater
#69Earlier quoted context omitted.
Your water needs might drop significantly once the forest is established. Depending on the trees, the established canopy might drop the evaporative losses dramatically.
Maybe they emulate a canopy with some kind of tarp while the trees are growing?
Wouldn't a tarp get in the way of sunlight, stopping photosynthesis?
Re: Egypt has managed to plant trees in the desert using wastewater
#70There is a big difference between merely planting trees in the desert and having them survive years later . . . just ask the Chinese