Terraforming the Deserts

 My folks were some of the first pioneer families to farm in the Columbia Basin Irrigation District developed by the US Bureau of Reclamation in the eastern desert of Washington State USA, where the District  pumps fresh water uphill from the Columbia River to a reservoir and then distributes it back down through canals to the improved Columbia Basin. So I know what infrastructure it takes to host sustainable human habitation. Private irrigated agriculture developers later improved on the format nearby. I just watched a video on the private Saltbush Corridor Irrigation Project in Australia and I am very impressed with their results. 


They don't have any nearby rivers so they put in large PV solar farms in the desert and use the electricity provided to power desalination plants on the coast and pump the freshened water to their inland desert farms. The sunlight is cyclical day-to-night so they only process and pump water during the day. This brings their total input costs way down and makes the whole project economical. The solar panels' shade cools the desert ground, the ground crops' water transpiration cools the panels, the dripped irrigation water drives the soil salts down and builds up the subsurface aquifer, and the whole thing moderates the surrounding environment creating a nicer local ecosystem. Yea, human innovators!

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