Sahara

They have found a way to green the Sahara and it is not by planting trees: by releasing 500 turtles

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The Sahel is the strip of land that separates the Sahara and the African savannahs, but it is increasingly more desert than anything else. The United Nations UNCCD has already warned that the Sahel is one of the regions of Africa most vulnerable to desertification and what it entails: soils so hardened that they prevent water penetration and plants no longer take root. If planting is not possible and conditions become harsh, desertification leads to forced migration of those who live there. The classic response to try to stop desertification has been to plant trees, but it is an expensive method and does not always work, so someone has proposed a different experiment: it is not introducing vegetation but rather returning an animal whose behavior is capable of changing the structure of the soil. Turtles for frenew the desert. In 2021 a research team he blurted out 500 african spurred tortoises precisely on the southern border of the Sahara. They didn’t do anything special, just let them do their thing. Five years later, satellite images they have confirmed that where before there was only sand, now there are green patches of vegetation. And what do African turtles do? Well dig. This species, whose natural habitat is precisely the Sahelbuilds burrows up to 15 meters in length to instinctively protect themselves from heat and cold. This construction work breaks up the crust of the soil, allowing water to pass through and ultimately creating more favorable conditions for seeds to germinate. Why is it important. Because the African spurred tortoise is a ecosystem engineer: a species that benefits other species with its modification of the environment. Like the UNCCD has already pointed outland restoration is one of the best solutions to desertification and the turtle does it alone, without the need for machinery. For local communities, digging in semi-desert areas to have holes that retain water is an arduous task that the turtle does natively throughout its life. Paradoxically, the African spurred tortoise is native there, but it is increasingly difficult to find because it is threatened. That this turtle disappears from the Sahel is bad news for biodiversity, but also for the soil: without its valuable excavation work, the surface hardens, the water drains away and, ultimately, the seeds do not hold. Context. The soil of the Sahel has been so degraded in recent decades that as early as 1977 was organized in NairobiKenya, the first United Nations Conference on Desertification. Although it is one of the most vulnerable areas, it is one of the great structural problems of Africa: two thirds of the continent is classified as deserts or arid lands and it is estimated that two thirds of African land is already degraded to some degree. But for the African spurred tortoise it has not been a bed of roses either: it has been under the magnifying glass of the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora since 2000, with restrictions to protect it and reintroduction in the north and west of Ferlo and Senegal: in 2017 the African Chelonian Institute already made a documented release of 20 individuals. There are also captive colonies in several countries in Africa and outside of it. However, the according to the IUCN Red List The species’ population continues to decline due to habitat loss, exploitation for eggs and meat, the pet trade, and the effects of climate change such as desertification. In detail. The ecological mechanism consists in which the turtle’s digging breaks up the hardened crust of the soil and its tunnels allow rainwater to penetrate deeper layers, instead of evaporating quickly. As a result, porosity improves, surface temperature decreases and nutrient availability is enhanced. As a consequence, the soil gains water retention capacity and humidity is maintained longer. Seeds that could not germinate before find the minimum conditions to develop. In addition, insects and microorganisms colonize these excavated spaces, which activates the ecological chain and ends up attracting birds and small vertebrates. It is not a lush jungle, but it has enough green shoots to stop desertification and recover biodiversity. Yes, but. The reintroduction of turtles does not work miracles: it is just the starting point. For the process to progress on the right track, other requirements are necessary, such as availability of rain and a sustainable and stable management policy. There is little point in introducing them if they are later hunted, something not unreasonable given that the species is already threatened. On the other hand, we know that digging improves the soil, but I could be doing something else: disperse seeds throughout the Sahel, so that part of those new green shoots are also their work without us yet knowing it. In Xataka | The rain has transformed the driest desert on the planet into a sea of ​​flowers. It’s a sight to behold and a problem for experts In Xataka | 4,000 years ago the Sahara was not yet a desert. We have found the new evidence in a cave in Sudan Cover | Wikimedia and Ash Hayes

A young planet neighboring Earth was destroyed before it finished forming and now we have found a piece in the Sahara

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According to estimates based on the fireball tracking, is calculated Approximately 17,000 meteorites fall to Earth per year. Only a few of them recover. There are about 80,000 registered worldwide. However, the numbers must be much higher. There will be a multitude of meteorites abandoned in drawers or lost as simple unidentified stones that would make that figure much higher. It’s a shame, because a single meteorite can give us very useful information about our planet and its neighbors. A good example of this is NWA 12774, a fragment found in 2019 in the Sahara. Thanks to it, a team of scientists from the University of Colorado Boulder has managed to extract very interesting data about the dawn of the Solar System. The reconstructed history. The analysis The composition of this meteorite, as well as computer simulations, have allowed us to establish that it must be a fragment of a protoplanet of a size similar to the Moon or Mars, which 4.5 billion years ago decomposed into debris, possibly after colliding with another celestial object while rotating around the Sun. An especially rare angrita. Initial analysis of this meteorite indicated that it is an angrite. This is a very rare type of rock among meteorites. In fact, it is estimated that of the 80,000 that have been registered, only 68 are Angritas. They are rare meteorites because they contain very little silica, a material that is very abundant on rocky planets like Earth. Initially, angritas were thought to be asteroid fragments. However, in this case it is doubly rare, because it also contains clinopyroxene, a very common crystal in the Earth’s crust and mantle. As if that were not enough, said clinopyroxene is rich in CaTs forms, a “version” of this mineral in which one magnesium atom and one silicon atom are replaced by two aluminum atoms. It is a process that requires very high pressure conditions to occur. A large origin. According to the computational reconstructions that have been carried out, to generate such a quantity of CaTs it would be necessary for this object to be subjected to a pressure of 17.5 kilobars. It is something immense. To give us an idea, in the depths of the Mariana Trench barely reaches one kilobar. This pressure could not originate inside an asteroid. According to the calculations made by these scientists, an object of at least 2,000 kilometers in diameter would be needed. Even more. Another relevant fact about this meteorite is that it has sharp edges and chemical patterns that would have been erased if it had originated at a great depth within its parent body. This tells us that said body is immense, since what is relatively shallow compared to its size is actually great depth in terms of pressure. Therefore, the 2,000 kilometers would be short. We would rather be looking at about 3,600 kilometers in diameter, approximately that of the Moon. Some estimates would point to something even larger, like Mars, but in principle they fit the dimensions of the Moon. Very different from Earth. Protoplanets are planets in birth. They must continue colliding and fusing material around them to finish becoming planets. The object that originated this meteorite did not do so. But it should have been part of the dawn of the Solar System. Thanks to him, we know that, at first, the composition of rocky planets would be very different from that of Earth. Something must have changed over time. It would be ideal to analyze more meteorites, since there must be others like NWA 12774. The problem is that we will have to dust off those abandoned drawers to find them. Image | John Kashuba In Xataka | We have been trying to answer the question “where do meteorites come from” for years. And it’s harder than it seems

60 years ago, NASA took a look at the Sahara from space and found a very strange “perfect eye”

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Although we tend to think that the unknown is in space and we focus our exploration on what is outside the Earth, our planet continues to surprise us: from the 50,000 volcanoes hidden in the seabed to shapes and constructions that seem too curious to have appeared out of nowhere… especially when we see them from space. It is the case of Great Dam of Zimbabwe (which by the way, is not a dam). We are not leaving the African continent because there is another scar of land with a shape so precise that it is disconcerting. It can’t be seen from the ground, but as you gain height it can be seen better. However, it is from space where it is best appreciated, as NASA has already photographed. There it is simply shocking: it is the inexplicable eye of the Sahara. It is a kind of giant eye that looks at the sky engraved in the rock of the Sahara, it is actually called Richat structure. As says French astronaut Thomas Pesquetalmost all astronauts have taken a photo of it from space simply because it can’t be missed. The Britannica Encyclopedia assures that World War II pilots used it as a reference point. Tap to go to the post After all, they are almost 50 kilometers in diameter. To get an idea, if we moved it to Madrid, it would cover the entire city and reach surrounding municipalities. However, it is in Mauritania, at the western end of the Sahara. More specifically, it sits on the Adrar plateau, on the northwestern edge of the Taoudenni basin, about 500 meters above sea level and in an inhospitable area. As a curiosity, the closest town is Ouadane, it is about 17 kilometers from the edge of the structure and it is not just any city: it was founded in 1147 by the Idalwa el Hadj Berber tribe and its old part has been a UNESCO World Heritage Site since 1996. The first time we “discovered” it (that is to say, because it was already there) was in the 1930s and 1940s and the person who studied it in depth at that time was the French geographer Jacques Richard-Molard. Later, astronauts James McDivitt and Ed White, aboard the Gemini IV mission, were the first to photograph it from space in 1965. However, the image that illustrates the cover was taken on July 10, 2020 by an astronaut aboard the International Space Station, during the Expedition 63 mission, with a Nikon D5 camera with a 50 millimeter lens. Richat’s structure from the inside. Clemens Schmillen What is the Richard Structure and how was it formed? From that orbital height the image shows something that would be impossible to capture from the ground: a series of perfect concentric rings, like the waves left by a stone when it falls into water, but petrified in the desert. The tones of that figure range from ocher to bluish gray, from almost pristine white to rusty red. Each color is a different rock and belongs to a different era. Surrounding the structure, a sea of ​​dunes: on the right, longitudinal dunes that stretch in long parallel tongues and on the left, transverse dunes, wider and more arched. The set is truly strange to have formed naturally. POT Because it is not a lake that has dried up over time. It is neither a volcano nor the crater of a meteorite (the hypothesis which was most popular initially). It’s something much slower but just as violent: is the result of millions of years of geological forces working silently beneath the planet’s surface. And although the group as such was formed about 100 million years ago, those rocks are up to 2.5 billion years old. Or in other words, the Eye of the Sahara was forged in the Cretaceous, but the rocks belong to the time when there were no animals, only bacteria and algae. The Richat Structure is a deeply eroded geological anticline dome that was formed by a subsurface igneous intrusion, which deformed the overlying sedimentary rock layers, exposing concentric rings with the oldest rocks in the center. In a simplified way, a bubble of rock that never burst: the magma from inside the Earth pushed up the layers of rock above it and cooled without reaching the surface. The passage of time eroded that bubble as if it were an onion, exposing the rings of each layer. The hardest rocks resisted and formed the relief, the soft ones disappeared. Hence the circles. The most recent studies They confirm that there was also hot water circulating inside the structure, which accelerated and modeled the final shape. In Xataka | A 2.5 billion-year-old geological wonder: Zimbabwe’s Great Dam seen by NASA from space In Xataka | This is the impressive interactive map to see the Earth in 4K live from space and monitor satellites Cover | POT

Nolan is rolling ‘the Odyssey’ in the Western Sahara. A good part of Spanish cinema has been thrown over

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In the absence of One year for the premiere and having seen Only an official image From what it holds, the next of Christopher Nolan is already raising some controversy, although this time the reasons are completely extracinematographic. The filming of the film in the city of Dajla, in Morocco, already He aroused certain protests a few weeks ago, and these are now increasing with A statement signed by a large number of Spanish artists They ask for transparency with the reasons to have chosen that place. All against Nolan. Directors such as Rodrigo Sorogoyen, Benito Zambrano, Fernando Colomo and Icíar Bollaín and actors such as Javier BardemJuan Diego Botto, Carolina Yuste, Javier Gutiérrez, Nathalie Poza, Carlos Bardem, Guillermo Toledo, Alberto San Juan, Melanie Olivares or Luis Tosar have joined the aforementioned prior manifesto of the Sahara International Film Festival (Fisahara) against the recording of the film in this area of the African continent. The manifesto asks the producers of the film to “break their silence on why they chose the city of Dajla, occupied by Morocco, in the Western Sahara, as a place of filming of the movie scenes.” Without consent. The manifesto explains the reason for the protest: to film “without the consent of the Saharawi people. The only consent he received came from the occupant force: Morocco.” The problem, according to the festival, is that “Nolan (…) may have contributed without knowing it to the repression of the people of the Western Sahara, helping to normalize the brutal occupation of Morocco.” And he continues: “Morocco has turned Dajla into a tourist center, as Netanyahu intends to do with Gaza, a place to practice kitesurf, cultural events (…), conferences, renewable energy projects used to make the occupation green, etc.” The background of the conflict. The Western Sahara conflict It originates in 1975when Spain left its colonies, delivering the territory to Morocco and Mauritania instead of celebrating the self -determination referendum promised to the Saharawi people. Morocco launched the “Green march“That same 1975, an invasion of 350,000 civilians accompanied by military forces that occupied the Western Sahara, causing the Saharawi population to run massively into the desert and subsequently to the refugee fields of Tinduf, in Algeria. During this escape, Moroccan aviation systematically bombarded civilians refugees with napalm and white phosphorus in Camps like Um-Draigawhere they died between 2,000 and 3,000 Saharawis. 170,000 Saharawis They have lived as refugees for almost 50 yearswhile the Polisario Front continues to claim the independence of the territory and the right to self -determination recognized by the United Nations, in a conflict that resumed militarily in 2020 after 29 years of high fire. A laundering operation. The Moroccan government has been immersed in an intense international image washing strategy in relation to the Western Sahara, focused on the normalization of the occupation, the Economic and tourist promotion of the territoryand diplomatic and media manipulation. That is precisely what is attributed to Nolan from the statement that may be helping to be done, consciously or not. Much discussed lately it has been the Mass Influencers Invitationjournalists trips and content creators of European countries to promote the occupied city of Dajla. Nolan’s key role. Reda Benjelloun, from the Moroccan Cinematographic Center, told the local environment Stockings24 That the production of ‘the Odyssey’ has a vital importance for the city, since it is the first major Hollywood production that does so. In a radically opposite position is the Ministry of Culture of the Polisario Front, the Saharawi nationalist group that seeks self -determination, and which issued a release in which he affirmed that “this act constitutes a dangerous form of cultural normalization with the occupation, and an unusual exploitation of art and cinema to bleach the image of a colonial situation that is still imposed by force” In Xataka | Morocco has given Israel 34,000 km² of the Atlantic for gas exploitation. The problem: they are waters in conflict with Spain

The renewed interest of the United States in recognizing the sovereignty of Morocco about Sahara has a name: phosphate

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For years, the Western Sahara conflict was in a corner of the international debate: present, but silenced. However, he has returned strongly to the global stage. The reason is not only diplomatic, but economic. Behind the renewed support From US President Donald Trump to Morocco there is a key resource that moves interests and borders: phosphate. More than a statement. The support of the United States is not new. During his first term, Donald Trump has already recognized Moroccan sovereignty about Western Sahara, in exchange for Morocco established diplomatic relations with Israel as part of Abraham’s agreements. According to Reutersthe president has recently reiterated his position in a letter addressed to King Mohammed VI, reaffirming Washington’s recognition over the territory. Under the sand. There are tangible reasons behind this growing support and is under the ground: phosphate. Morocco is the second world producer of phosphates, After Chinaand controls 70% of world reserves. About 8% of national production comes from the Western Sahara, specifically from the Phosboucraa mine, According to data collected by Swissinfo. This mineral is essential for the production of fertilizers, key to modern agriculture. It cannot be manufactured artificially, and its shortage makes it a strategic resource. How BBC has warnedworld food security depends largely on phosphorus. After the war in Ukraine and the crisis in supply chains, its value has shot. In that context, Morocco has gained international influence. A trade under scrutiny. But there is a problem: the Western Sahara is considered by the UN a non -autonomous territory pending decolonization. AND According to international lawany exploitation of its resources must have the consent of the Saharawi people, represented by the Polisario Front. That consent, until now, has not arrived. Therefore, the Polisario has opted for a legal offensive. In recent years, it has managed to block ships with Saharawi phosphate in ports of South Africa, Panama or New Zealand. At least fifteen international companies have stopped buying it, fearing litigation or reputational damage, According to BBC. An economic boom that redraws the map. Beyond phosphate, Morocco is strongly committed to an economic transformation of Western Sahara. According to Bloombergthe country has launched an investment strategy for more than 10,000 million dollars. One of the star projects is Dakhla’s Atlantic port, valued at 1.2 billion, which seeks to position itself as a logistics axis between Africa, Europe and Latin America. That is not all, because other projects are added as a one billion highway towards Tangier, wind farms, tourist complexes and green hydrogen plants. According to Mounir Houari, director of the Regional Investment Agency, Interviewed in BloombergThe objective is that the region goes from 1% to 6% of national GDP in the next 15 years. And the Saharawi? While Morocco transforms Western Sahara with millionaire investments, the people are still waiting for a political solution. For years, tens of thousands have lived in refugee camps in Algeria, in precarious conditions, far from the decisions taken over their territory. In parallel, international organizations They denounce that Saharawi cannot participate freely in decisions that affect their territory. As long as this right is not guaranteed, international legality Keep questioning The legitimacy of the exploitation of resources in the region. A wound still open. While the world observes phosphate as a strategic resource to feed the planet, who live on the earth that produces them expect something simpler: be heard. Because the same mineral that makes the fields grow also feeds a conflict that, despite the passage of time, remains without healing. Image | Unspash Xataka | China goes for those who mock their export controls. The focus is in strategic minerals that sustain their power

Meteorologists have been warning that southern Spain would reach 35 degrees this Sunday. The Sahara had another idea

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Sunday was going to be the key day: the moment when the country, after a very rare spring, was going to receive the first summer bars. By the south, Claro: Seville was directly at 35 degrees and Córdoba would not come down from 32. However, something has changed. Why was I going to make so much heat? For an old acquaintance, an anticyclonic dorsal that is installed on top of our heads and, without wind or clouds, makes temperatures begin to shoot: the Iberian oven. It is the same configuration that causes us the frequent heat waves that visit us every year. The dorsal will continue here, but its effect will be much less than expected. And the fault is a Dana. As the Dana that was in the Atlantic approaches the Portuguese coast, it will displace a huge tongue of Saharian dust that will enter the southern and southeast peninsular. As Nacho Espinos explained And as we have seen on other occasions, the suspension dust “reduces insolation and limits the values” that the thermometers can reach. That does not mean that it will not be hot. Of course it will be hot. Above all, if we compare them with the first two weeks of May. Not only can up to 32 degrees be found in the heart of the Guadalquivir Valley, but many parts of the country will be above 30 degrees. But the 35 degree psychological limit is not going to be achieved. And that the environment will be very murky. It is not necessary to remember that the abundance of dust in suspension, worsens air quality and can generate mild respiratory problems (from mucous irritation or nasal obstruction to itching in the eyes or dryness of the upper respiratory tract). In areas with a very strong calima complications can be greater. Above all, in people with previous ailments. According to The works of the University of La Lagunaup to “2% more people die from heart disease the two days of the phenomena of Calima.” What can we expect? A summer that does not end up landing, even if it is closer. That and A bad air quality. Above all, because to the extent that blockages in Europe continue, the arrival of storms, danas and cold storms can continue an almost indefinite time. That 2025 is strange We have it clear. How strange it will become, It is still to investigate. Image | Copernicus In Xataka | May is putting a March face: Aemet’s great question is if 2025 will definitely end the drought

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