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Dune Sand Fixation: Mauritania Seawater Pipeline Macroproject

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Macro-engineering Seawater in Unique Environments

Part of the book series: Environmental Science and Engineering ((ENVSCIENCE))

Abstract

Wide-spreading actively migratory sand dune fields are mainly found in the Earth’s climatically designated desert regions—“hot deserts” cover ~14.2% of Earth’s land (Peel et al. 2007; Parsons and Abrahams 2009). Some eremologists suspect that “global desertification”, a persistent decline of ecosystems’ benefits for humans—loss of utility or potential utility of land—in already dry regions, is occurring and will increase as the twenty-first century unfolds (Yizhaq et al. 2007). “Drylands cover about 41% of Earth’s land surface and are home to more than 38% of the total global population of 6.5 billion” (Reynolds et al. 2007). Here, however, we focus only on certain active sand dune fields located in the northern Africa coastal nation of Mauritania where few people live and work today (Badescu and Cathcart 2008).

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Acknowledgments

The authors thank Dr. Stephen Salter (University of Edinburgh) for his truly inspirational idea for the sand dune field sequestration of unwanted excess seawater and Dr. J. Marvin Herndon (Transdyne Corporation, San Diego, California) for his chemistry advice.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Polytechnic University of Bucharest, Bucharest, Romania

    Viorel Badescu

  2. Geographos, Burbank, CA, USA

    Richard B. Cathcart

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  1. Viorel Badescu
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Correspondence to Viorel Badescu .

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Editors and Affiliations

  1. Candida Oancea Inst., Polytechnic University Bucuresti, Spl. Independentei 313, Bucuresti, 060042, Romania

    Viorel Badescu

  2. Geographos, W. Olive Avenue 1300, Burbank, 91506-2225, California, USA

    Richard B. Cathcart

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Badescu, V., Cathcart, R.B. (2010). Dune Sand Fixation: Mauritania Seawater Pipeline Macroproject. In: Badescu, V., Cathcart, R. (eds) Macro-engineering Seawater in Unique Environments. Environmental Science and Engineering(). Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-14779-1_21

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