Toxic Salton Sea Dust Triggers Changes in Lung Microbiome After Just One Week

from "Islands of Abandonment":

> As I get further out, my feet sink deeper into the thin, grey sand. When I look closer, I see it is not sand at all, but the dry bones of fish, pounded into shards, and the tiny, skull-like husks of barnacles. This is a foul place. The air is thick with brine and guano and decomposition. Even now, in the violet dusk, the heat is oppressive. But as I cross the crystallised flats, the water gleams into view, an impossible sea in the middle of the desert.

> It is a poison lake whispering sweet nothings. It promises cool succour, quenched thirst. Despite what I know of this shimmering mirage - despite the stink and the rot and the waste that surrounds it, despite the staring eyes of the dead and desiccating fish that litter its shrinking shores, despite the absence of vegetation - I can’t help but quicken my pace. I stumble through sucking mud towards this false vision, on and on until the muck is over my feet, and up to my ankles, and I am shin-deep in a warm broth that, when stirred, releases a draught so stagnant I can taste it.

surely not a place to be proud of.

The way that desertification spreads is primarily because the soil has no capacity for holding water. The most common cause of death in deserts is not actually thirst but drowning. The inability to hold moisture means thatwhen there is rain it can turn into flash floods which will then wash away any top soil there already is.

There are countless techniques used by this group to target that specific problem and build soil safely that won't get washed away. As well as storing water in ways that won't lead to evaporation. They build swales and shape the landscape in order to manage how and where the water flows through the land and use windbreaks to resist the harsh winds that may also lead to topsoil loss.