Post by @ergative@wandering.shop

RE: https://wandering.shop/@adapalmer/116602085281035534

holy fuck, china can reclaim farmland from desert, it seems!

Chinese researchers sprayed cyanobacteria onto desert sand and turned it into stable soil in just 10 months. Cyanobacteria oozes sticky sugars that glue loose grains of sand into a crust that’s tough enough to cut wind erosion and trap water — and then those bacteria photosynthesize, leaving behind organic matter, and pull nitrogen from the air, converting it into fertilizer. Drop seeds into the soil 10-16 months later and they’re very happy. https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/science/chinese-researchers-turn-desert-sand-into-fertile-soil-in-just-10-months-using-cyanobacteria/articleshow/130391558.cms
#ShareGoodNewsToo

Will Tuladhar-Douglas

@yetiinabox@todon.nl · 14 hours ago

@ergative

Check the actual research, please. There's a long string of articles and it's not clear what the (Indian!) newspaper is reacting to. (Maybe there's someone in #fediscience who knows this field?) Chinese biologists and agronomists been working on this and it kind of works a bit. Interesting, but not a game changer. China has large areas of loess in the west and they've been experimenting for decades with different ways to stabilise it and make it productive. (Like dams on rivers, etc - instrumental approach to landscape) Oh, and not turn into dust storms that shut down Beijing.

Ergative Absolutive

@ergative@wandering.shop · 2 hours ago

@yetiinabox Sounds like you know more about this than I do, so thank you for providing more context. If you want to point me towards more reliable public-facing discussion on this, I'll share that too.

However, I'm not not inclined to do a literature review on Google scholar every time I see a neat news article, and even if I were, I'm not a soil biologist, so I wouldn't be qualified to evaluate the original research I found. I'm afraid you'll have to keep on posting your own correctives.

Will Tuladhar-Douglas

@yetiinabox@todon.nl · 16 minutes ago

@ergative

Apologies if my tone was harsh. I saw the original post too, and went down a rabbit hole trying to verify it, which *might* explain - though not justify - my sense of frustration.