Bringing Terraforming Back Down to Earth

The concept of terraforming is mostly the stuff of space science, and it involves the thoughtfully planned and surgically executed manipulation of an extraterrestrial planet -- its topography, temperature or atmosphere -- to affect (human) life-sustaining conditions.

And while the notion of reforesting vast deserts has been kicked around ecological circles for some time, a team of scientists has determined that massive scale projects in the Sahara Desert and the Australian Outback are indeed daunting, but within our reach.

The study arises through the efforts of cell biologist Leonard Ornstein from Mount Sinai School of Medicine and NASA Goddard Institute climate scientists David Rind and Igor Aleinov.

Obviously, the need to move lots of fresh water to a wide area where little to none currently exists is the lynchpin for the team's vision of turning the desert green. The scheme, currently reported by Science and set to be published in the journal Climatic Change, rests on seawater desalination and transport to inland locations via aqueducts and drip irrigation.

Ornstein and team have their collective eye on eucalyptus in particular, owing to its fast growth and heat tolerance. A fully forested Sahara would achieve up to an 8 degree Celsius localized temperature decrease. And the local surface atmospheric moisture exchange through evaporation and transpiration would increase clouds, and rainfall as well -- possibly to the tune of an additional 30 or more inches of the wet stuff annually.

And the growth and maintenance of Saharan and Outback forests would remove 8 billion tons of carbon from the atmosphere annually.

The team concedes that the changes would not come cheaply, but they counter with the fact that any significant atmospheric carbon dioxide remedy will have a large price tag attached to it. If we're going to spend the money, after all, perhaps it makes most sense to spend it on something we'll all really be happy with for a long time to come.

Photo courtesy of Jgremillot, via Wikimedia Commons