Desert Bloom Research Articles

Can the Desert Bloom? Lessons Learned from the Israeli Case

Despite the central management of Israel's water resources and the highly planned strategy for a sustainable water supply, Israel has twice faced an acute water crisis during the past decade. Although the visible problem is related to a lack of additional quantities of water, the deterioration of water quality appears to be endangering the future use of available water quantities as well. A long-term policy of ground water mining (translated to salt water encroachments), and irrigation with relatively saline water and recycled waste water, among other damage, account for this deterioration. Enhanced flushing of the salt and contaminant load from the aquifers (using various techniques) is proposed as a solution to the problem.

Competing Narratives: Philosophical Reflections on the Palestinian-Israeli Conflict

Assessing competing narratives is central to our understanding of the current crisis in the Holy Land. The histories of the region give us invaluable perspectives, which, in turn, take the form of stories. The stories attending nation-building, such as ‘socialist pioneers’ ‘making the desert bloom’, effectively have shaped the world's perception of the fledgling State of Israel, obscuring even the faces of the indigenous people of Palestine (not to mention their 1948 Nakba catastrophe). The same mindset, tragically, continues to prevail among American media: lines of questioning by the ‘anchor persons’ on the evening news simply presume that Israel is ‘us’ and Palestine ‘them’, no matter how ‘fair’ the presenters try to be. This article is a philosophical attempt to reflect on the evolution of the Palestinian-Israeli conflict, giving both the historical background and the political context within which the current tragedy in Palestine-Israel is unfolding.

Let the desert bloom: an overview of an attempt to promote sustainable development and environmental protection in the Jordanian Badia region

AbstractThe Bedu have lived for centuries in harmony with the environment in the Middle Eastern desert known as the Badia region. However, during the 20th century their environment was fragmented and divided to form parts of Jordan, Syria, Iraq and Saudi Arabia. This process restricted their movements and increased the pressure on the environment. In addition, economic growth and urbanization have also had an impact on their way of life. As a consequence, the Jordan Badia Research and Development Programme (BRDP) was established, during 1992, to improve the Bedu's quality of life and to ensure sustainable development and environmental protection in the Badia. This paper reviews the BRDP strategy as well as the deliverables thus far in terms of benefits to local communities, facilities, pioneered projects, main research outcomes and current research priorities. Copyright © 2003 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd and ERP Environment.

From the Counting House to the Field and Loom: Ecologies, Cultures, and Economies in the Missions of Sonora (Mexico) and Chiquitanía (Bolivia)

From the Counting House to the Field and Loom: Ecologies, Cultures, and Economies in the Missions of Sonora (Mexico) and Chiquitanía (Bolivia)

Irrigated Eden: The Making of an Agricultural Landscape in the American West

Irrigation came to the arid West in a wave of optimism about the power of water to make the desert bloom. Mark Fiege's fascinating and innovative study of irrigation in southern Idaho's Snake River valley describes a complex interplay of human and natural systems. Using vast quantities of labor, irrigators built dams, excavated canals, laid out farms, and brought millions of acres into cultivation. But at each step, nature rebounded and compromised the intended agricultural order. The result was a new and richly textured landscape made of layer upon layer of technology and intractable natural forces - one that engineers and farmers did not control with the precision they had anticipated. Irrigated Eden vividly portrays how human actions inadvertently helped to create a strange and sometimes baffling ecology.

Nature and the English Diaspora: Environment and History in the United States, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand

Nature and the English Diaspora: Environment and History in the United States, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand

Rescuing Irrigated Desert Agriculture

From its birth in British India in 1847, modern irrigated desert agriculture has grown in just more than a century to produce one-third of the world's crops. Until the techniques of civil engineering were wedded to the ancient art of irrigation on the plains of the Punjab, most crops were rain-fed, except in areas such as the Nile Valley, where reliable seasonal floods made irrigation practical. Today, in contrast, we have made the desert bloom, giving ourselves fresh produce yearround and making the difference between survival and starvation in much of the developing world. Without irrigation, it would not have been possible to farm the high-yielding seeds of the Green Revolution, which greatly reduced the threat of famine in Asia and Latin America. But now, after a century of heavy irrigation, serious side effects are beginning to appear. Soils are becoming salinized by the cycles of wetting and drying in an arid climate, and wildlife has been poisoned by toxic drainage pumped from beneath irrigated fields where it has built up over time. These side effects have caused some to predict that the bounty of modern desert agriculture may not be sustainable, but others see hope of reducing the side effects through vastly improved water management.

Elusive Prophet: Ahad Haam and the Origins of Zionism (review)

Book Reviews 111 Elusive Prophet: Ahad Haam and the Origins of Zionism, by Steven J. Zipperstein. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1993. 386 pp. $35.00. Ahad Haam's Cultural Zionism has usually been overshadowed by the Political Zionism of Herzl, the Practical Zionism of Weizmann and Ben Gurion, or the Revisionist Zionism of Jabotinsky. Ahad Haam had impressive followers, among them Gershon Sholem, Chaim Nahman Bialik and Martin Buber, but to many he seemed a luftmensch-bookish, highminded , and cautious-a prophet to be honored rather than heeded. He seemed to exemplify the DiasporaJew's intoxication with the word rather than· Zionism's intoxication with the deed. His rivals appealed to the imagination. Herzl negotiated with crumbling empires, A. D. Gordon called for renewal through labor, Jabotinsky formed clandestine armies. Ahad Haam responded to all of these adventures with scorn. His battles were over the editorship of Hebrew journals, his power struggles over the leadership of obscure study groups in Odessa. His works, like Marx's Capital, could be evoked to demonstrate the theoretical depth ofZionism, but they did not send youthful idealists to clear the swamps and make the desert bloom. Steven Zipperstein's brilliant biography, though still focusing on the thinker and intellectual controversialist, restores the real Ahad Haam as a gadfly with a sting. Though the most important material in the volume remains Ahad Haam's series of articles, Zipperstein provides a number of skillful sketches that reveal the man. There are the paragraphs describing his icy response to his father's death, or his outrage against his daughter Rachel's marriage to a gentile. The pages on Ahad Haam's world, Jewish Odessa at the turn of the century, are especially graphic. As he describes it, it was an anarchist's dream, a free-for-all of contending Hassidic rebbes, religious and secular, "a natural setting for experimentation," eternally subverting established authority. One thinks of the world-quarrelling Russian Socialist exile in Switzerland. Ahad Haam's austerity, singlemindedness , and impatience with adversaries reminds one of the young Lenin. like Lenin, Ahad Haam created a vanguard to guide and transform the masses, though this vanguard, called B'nei Moshe, seemed more like the Freemasons than the Bolsheviks. The volume is primarily an intellectual history. Zipperstein presents the unfolding of Ahad Haam's thought article by article. He begins with Ahad Haam's critique of the Haskala and takes us slowly through the entire series: his critique of the fledgling Jewish settlement in Palestine, his scheme for a revival of Hebrew culture, his notorious review of Herzl's 112 SHOFAR Spring 1995 Vol. 13, No.3 Alteneueland as well as his dismissal of the early romanticism concerning Hebrew labor. Ahad Haam called for a Zionism of the tortoise, a cultural revolution, a Jewish state, but one that would ripen slowly. He abhorred adventurism. He emerges as a paradox, a messiah wary of messianism, a nationalist wary of nationalism. like the other Zionists he too was a prophet, but his prophecies, like those of old, contain a legacy of warnings. Ahad Haam's nay-saying was so relentless and unsparing that he could have been called the Zionist curmudgeon. As editor of the Hebrew journal Ha-Sbiloacb he did not suffer inferior prose. He was critical of the Rothschild enterprises in Jewish Palestine as "inimical to the growth of a self-respecting, pioneering elite"; he scandalized the Zionist movement by ridiculing Herzl's Alteneueland as "inferior" for envisaging a non-Jewish Jewish state with "English games, German or French Theatre, and continental conviviality" and dismissed one of the great Zionist icons, A.D. Gordon, and his call for "Hebrew labour" as "misguided." But Zipperstein also gives a persuasive account of Ahad Haam as a constructive builder of Zion. His cultural revolution was solid and enduring. The revival of the Hebrew language, the establishment of Haifa Technion, the Hebrew University, and Herzliya all gave the Jewish state a strong educational infrastructure. These achievements were more than cultural. At least one Arab writer credits Israel's scientific culture with its military and economic edge. As well, Ahad Haam's vision of a Jewish state as a spiritual rallying point for...

Evaluation of Desert Bloom Plus, Ion Moisture Film in Reclamation Efforts, Navajo Mine, Northwest New Mexico

Reclamation practices at Navajo Mine involve the establishment of native vegetation on mined lands. Currently, this involves corporation of a grass hay mulch into the soil following seeding. The mulch retards moisture loss and impedes wind erosion. Reclamation areas are characteristically irrigated for two seasons. In 1992, management of Navajo Mine became interested in finding an alternative to the use of grass hay mulch that would be readily available year to year, be of consistent quality and cost, less expensive to apply, sterile, and as good as or better than hay mulch in its ability to maintain consistent soil moisture. A commercially available chemical product, Desert Bloom Plus, manufactured by Hydra-Soil International, is a possible replacement for mulch. A study implemented in June 1993, sought to compare vegetal performance using mulch and Desert Bloom (DBP) in irrigated and non-irrigated conditions. Test results indicate a significant positive response of mean total cover, mean perennial grass and mean annual forb cover to irrigation. There were no differences comparing DBP, Mulch, and DBP-Mulch in either irrigated or non-irrigated treatments. Mean total cover and annual forb cover values of DBP-Mulch treatments tend to be slightly higher than mean total cover and annual forb covermore » values of Mulch treatments in irrigated and non-irrigated treatments.« less

Seeds of Change: A Quincentennial Commemoration ed. by Herman J. Viola, Carolyn Margolis

TECHNOLOGY AND CULTURE Book Reviews 177 reform. The expertise that went into the engineering aspects of irrigation would be applied to economic, agricultural, and social planning. Yet his two California colonies at Durham and Delhi were less than successful. Kluger notes the economic reasons for failure but tells us as well that Mead’s vision was probably doomed from the outset. How, after all, could one create a hearty independent farmer by regimented, dictatorial means? This focus on social conditions, however, stayed with Mead beyond Durham and Delhi. Kluger describes Mead’s final attempt at a model community, the town of Boulder City, Nevada, built by the Bureau of Reclamation for the workers constructing Boulder Dam, now known as Hoover Dam. Elwood Mead had a love for farming, order, and efficiency, but he looked beyond the technical aspects of dam and canal building for irrigated agriculture. To him, “the reclaiming of desert lands was more than an engineering problem; it encompassed all aspects of putting the land to use and settling it with family farmers” (p. 150). Federal reclamation, in its early years, was less than successful, because while federal engineers saw the relationship between building the dams and settling the land with family farmers, they could not construct it; it did not lend itself to formulaic solutions. And yet something drove men like Mead to continue the experiment, to hold to the vision of a West populated with family farms. Kluger has given us one man’s story in that quixotic adventure to make the desert bloom as a rose. It is well written, and, while Kluger clearly is a fan of Mead, he has attempted to give us a balanced portrait. Karen L. Smith Dr. Smith, manager of Customer Accounts—Power at the Salt River Project, Phoenix, Arizona, and adjunct professor of history at Arizona State University, is the author of The Magnificent Experiment: Building the Salt River Reclamation Project, 1890-1917 (University of Arizona Press, 1986). Seeds of Change: A Quincentennial Commemoration. Edited by Herman J. Viola and Carolyn Margolis. Washington, D.C.: Smithsonian Insti­ tution Press, 1991. Pp. 278; illustrations, bibliography, index. $39.95 (cloth); $24.95 (paper). “Seeds of Change” is the name of a Smithsonian Institution exhibition prompted by the quincentenary of Christopher Colum­ bus’s arrival in the Caribbean in 1492. The curators selected five central “seeds,” or agents of change—maize, diseases, potatoes, horses, and sugar. Columbus did not discover an unknown world, but the consequences of his four voyages created a new world. The exhibition examines the exchange of peoples, animals, plants, and microorganisms that is still occurring. This collection offifteen essays is the trade book for 178 Book Reviews TECHNOLOGY AND CULTURE the exhibition. Although the essays lack the cohesion of an exhibition catalog, the book is profuse with color illustrations and suggested readings. The paperback edition is a steal and will remain a valuable resource long after the Columbian quincentenary is old hat. These kudos notwithstanding, this volume would have benefited from a better-defined focus. Were the editors rushed to get the work through press by the time of the exhibit opening? If so, it is a pity, for the result lacks the full impact of the diverse scholarship represented. The phrase “seeds of change” is appealing, but this volume deals with sweeping global changes rather than with the intriguing seeds of the title. Just what were those persistent agents, or seeds of change? The five mentioned above, those selected for exhibition purposes, cannot carry the full weight of the story these essays tell, and, given the level of scholarship, there are some surprising omissions. Although at least three of the essays discuss Africans and persons of African descent, the Taino are barely mentioned. Surely the first Caribbean people to see the Spaniards merit more space. On that fateful October day of 1492 it was the Taino who began the relationship of trade and exchange basic to the theme of “seeds of change.” The last five essays stand out because they voice concerns about the present as it relates to the past, and they contain tough seeds of change. Placing these essays first would have given a better...

Flowering Affected by Daylength and Temperature in the Leafless Flowering Desert Geophyte Colchicum tunicatum, Its Annual Life Cycle and Vegetative Propagation

Colchicum tunicatum has an underground corm with three fleshy stalk internodes. The corm is replaced annually by a bud in the axil of the first foliage leaf. Sometimes the second or third axillary bud also develops into an independent shoot. Flowering takes place during autumn, before the onset of rain, when the leaves are still very small and positioned deep in the soil. At the time of leaf appearance during winter, the new replacement buds are visible on the newly developing corm. Corms of C. tunicatum were planted 10 cm below the soil surface outdoors at Sede Boqer in the area where C. tunicatum occurs naturally. The plants received 9, 12, 15, or 18 h light/day from sunlight, augmented with artificial low-level light after 4 P.M. Photoperiod affected flowering. The shorter the daylength, the earlier flowering started, as long as the daily minimum soil temperature was above 29 C.

Impact of agrodesert on a desert ecosystem

The desert ecosystem has characteristically low biological activity and a low diversity of flora and fauna. In this harsh evironment living organisms maintain a fragile homeostatic existence and in consequence, desert ecosystems are endowed with an inherently delicate ecological balance. Scientists have been preoccupied with making the desert bloom, catalyzed by the role of modern technology and changes are currently induced in desert ecosystems in order to transform them into productive agroecosystems. The management of these by irrigation throughout the year has created favourable environments for pest species: the continuity of oases with permanently mixed crops creates refuges for the propagation of pests. Together with other forces such as weather conditions, plant diseases, salinization and soil erosion, insect pest species serve to change agroecosystems back to their unmanaged states.

Blind Spots: Official U.S. Myths About the Middle East

More than most U.S. foreign policy issues, the Arab-Israeli conflict is clouded by a popular mythology that distorts perceptions and obfuscates the issues. On Central America, there is popular debate over the relative merits of contras versus Sandinistas; debate raged for a decade on Vietnam. But in neither case has misconception been so prevalent or the mythology so pervasive as to blind the vast majority of the American people to the arguments of one side or another. The Arab-Israeli conflict, on the other hand, promotes very little dialogue. A mythos has been developed by Israel and its supporters that virtually shuts out one side of the issue, a mythology so complete and all-embracing that it seldom allows of even the existence of another viewpoint. The aspects of this mythology are myriad. Israel is a small, beleaguered nation, so it goes, that has heroically and successfully confronted an enemy Goliath. The Arabs are dirty and warlike, usually illiterate, unable to excel at any endeavor. Arabs have thwarted all attempts to bring peace between themselves and peace-loving Israel. The Palestinians are not a distinct people but a group of terrorists who did not love their land enough to fight for it in 1948, who were never able to make their desert bloom in any case, and who prove that their only driving force is hatred of Israel when they disdain the opportunity to integrate themselves into the societies of Jordan and the other Arab states; Jews, after all, have only one nation, whereas Arabs have nineteen.

The sharing of scarce water resources

Australians have long been sensitive about water problems, and water management has been a highly politicised activity. The ‘making the desert bloom’ dream affected Australia as it did the Western United States. The 1950s and 1960s witnessed an extraordinary surge of engineering activity in major water development projects that could not be justified when proper economic analyses of the costs and resultant benefits were conducted. In this paper it will be argued that the ‘engineering fix’ approach owed its existence to the unanimous, unchallenged belief in the scarcity of Australia's water resources. The evidence and rationale for this belief are examined and it is argued that water is not scarce in a physical sense. However, the collection, storage and distribution of supplies are costly and economic scarcity exists, partly a product of resource misallocation and subsidised use.

How Israel Controls the Bedouin in Israel

At a time when much attention is given to the expansion of agricultural activity around the world, especially in the Middle East, where oil wealth is being invested in agricultural projects,2 a similar activity is being carried out in Israel under the slogan Making a Desert Bloom.3 It has also been described as the Israeli experience.4 Because of such activity and for many other reasons, the indigenous population of the Negev desert and other Bedouin groups in Israel have been frustrated in their attempt to improve their lives and welfare in a rapidly changing world. They have not been permitted to continue their traditional pastoralism, nor have they been granted the opportunity to develop an adequate agriculture for their own land. Due to the restrictive measures that were introduced and enforced, the Bedouin have naturally experienced significant and rapid changes in their economic and social life. Nearly all aspects of Bedouin life have been affected and these changes have shaken, and now threaten, the very roots of their culture.5 The changes clearly are reflected in their contemporary settlement pattern. The suggestion made by D. H. K. Amiran et al (1976)

The Desert Blooms—At a Price

This is the second in a two-part series on the economic and environmental effects of water use in the arid lands of the western US. It examines four specific areas differing in size and terrain: southwestern Arizona's Wellton-Mohawk Irrigation District, California's San Joaquin Basin, south central Arizona's Santa Cruz Basin, and Gaines County on the Great Plains. The one characteristic that binds them together (aside from an average of less than 20 inches of rainfall per year) is that, within each, human systems are exceeding the carrying capacity of their natural life-support systems. The results are increasing salinity and diminishing ground water. Federal subsidies for irrigation and development may not extend to new projects, but desertification is already a possibility for each of the areas. 130 references, 7 figures, 1 table.

“Making the Desert Bloom” A Myth Examined

The country [Palestine] was mostly an empty desert, with only a few islands of Arab settlement; and Israel's cultivable land today was indeed redeemed from swamp and wilderness. Shimon Peres. (a former Israeli Minister of Information)1 It was only after the Zionists made the desert bloom that they [the Palestinians] became interested in taking it from us. Levi Eshkol (a former Prime Minister of Israel)2

"Making the Desert Bloom" A Myth Examined

"Making the Desert Bloom" A Myth Examined

A PROTOTYPE OF THE MODERN SETTLING ‐RESERVOIR IN ANCIENT MESOPOTAMIA1

ABSTRACT If one goes to Iraq today, as I did in the summer of 1972 one sees that the area once served by this ancient canal system is presently abandoned to desert. The Ur III texts would indicate that the Sumerian irrigation system allowed them to raise good crops of grain, vegetables and fruits, in an area now completely barren except for an occasional thorn‐bush. This paper deals in detail with the Sumerian term nag‐ku5, which seems to be a key word in arriving at a more accurate picture of Sumerian canal and irrigation systems. Ur III material indicates that the nag‐ku5 may have served a role similar to that of the modern settling‐reservoir. The aim of this study is the hope that knowledge of the past could help this desert bloom once more.

Cultivation Development and Expansion in China's Colonial Realm in Central Asia

Views of desert regions of the world as areas with little productive use for the support of mankind have always been tempered by the optimism expressed in the phrase “to make the desert bloom like the rose.” We also know that the concept of the “Garden of Eden” was evolved in a desert environment. Thus, it is well realized that in a temperate or warm arid region, the flow of water from springs or from exotic rivers or the availability of fresh ground water derived from distant rainfall or snow-melt may create green oases of productive agriculture. One such region is China's colonial realm of Sinkiang, and especially the Tarim basin in central Asia. Here, such land and water resources presently provide some seven million people with food and materials for clothing. This also is a region with valuable unexploited mineral resources both varied and substantial.