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Comment by jillesvangurp | Hacker News Reader

Soil erosion is a reversible process but it will require a little effort and planning. When it works it's an investment that actually pays off.

Here's a nice example of the Chinese restoring some soil: https://rethink.earth/turning-desert-to-fertile-farmland-on-...

I've seen a documentary with some before and after video footage. Quite amazing difference: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IDgDWbQtlKI

Planned grazing is another approach that has seen some success: https://www.theguardian.com/sustainable-business/2014/aug/19...

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Is soil erosion ever naturally reversed ?

It seems to me to be a one way downhill process ?

Sure, soil building happens naturally.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pioneer_species

Obviously there was no soil at first since it's dead organic matter.

Yes, but that’s not “reversing” so much as completely rebuilding soil, which takes decades of no farming and no tillage.

A lot of loss can also be trivially reduces by planting rows of trees between fields, which I saw all over the place in NZ, but haven’t seen elsewhere.

Pretty standard in Europe : https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bocage

It sure does, see Rangitoto Island for an example (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rangitoto_Island).

A bare volcanic rock after its eruption 600 years ago, the island is now largely reforested. Lava fields contain no soil of the typical kind, so it must come from windblown matter and slow breaking-down processes of the native flora.

Erosion is why there is soil in the first place. Moss and lichens for one create it from rocks.

Natural rates of formation are ~1 in/century (2.5 sanetimeter units).

FYI

Planned grazing is very likely bullshit.

https://www.truthordrought.com/holistic-grazing-myths

edit: https://skepticalscience.com/holistic-management-rebuttal.ht...

That’s possibly true, but a position paper from a group whose stated goal is to promote the vegan diet should be regarded with some skepticism when it comes to presenting unbiased scientific facts.

Wasn't holistic management invented by Allan Savory? (the guy that killed 40,000 elephants)

Yep; something he readily admits to in his ted talk as something he royally messed up. That doesn't mean everything he says or does is bullshit. Basically all he is saying that cattle grazing and fertilizing land can be a good thing and if you do it in a somewhat data driven way by actually looking at how the land responds, you can get some impressive results.

Read the guardian article, it cites a few reputable sources to debunk the debunkers. So, I'd be careful calling bullshit on things based on some blogs with an agenda. Skeptical science seems to exist to empower climate change deniers with the illusion of factual reality. Bullshit in other words.

Ultimately, it seems there are a few projects out there practicing instead of theorizing and converting actual desert back into fertile land.

> Skeptical science seems to exist to empower climate change deniers with the illusion of factual reality

It seems like Skeptical Science is "Getting skeptical about global warming skepticism". They are a pro global warming site.

> https://www.truthordrought.com/holistic-grazing-myths

Based on quickly skimming that webpage, its main scientific source is one article in 2014 in International Journal of Biodiversity. This International Journal of Biodiversity [1] was only published from 2013 to 2018. It is such a small and fringe journal that I can not even find an impact factor for it. Also its publisher [2] has occasionally been accused of predatory practices. Without reading the article, I cannot of course directly comment on the quality of the study. But publishing in such a small-time, fringe journal gives a bad secondary signal.

[1] https://www.hindawi.com/journals/ijbd/contents/

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hindawi_Publishing_Corporation

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