Iceland's attempts to replant its forests

Re:Iceland's attempts to replant its forests by amorphid on Friday October 20, 2017 @10:08AM (#15515864)

> As a result, Iceland is a case study in desertification, with little or no vegetation, though the problem is not heat or drought. About 40 percent of the country is desert, Dr. Halldorsson said. “But there’s plenty of rainfall — we call it ‘wet desert.’”

At first I thought it was an error to call an area that gets plenty of rain a desert. I thought desert was strictly defined by the amount of rainfall. But maybe that's not correct. The wikipedia article on desert states...

"Deserts can be classified by the amount of precipitation that falls, by the temperature that prevails, by the causes of desertification or by their geographical location." [1]

I wonder if there's a stricter definition used in a specific scientific context.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Desert

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Re:Iceland's attempts to replant its forests by mattrices on Friday October 20, 2017 @11:42AM (#15516623)

The soil type in iceland has volcanic parent material with very high carbon content that results in a low nitrogen to carbon ratio so has little nutrients available to support biomass production without adjustments.

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Re:Iceland's attempts to replant its forests by kobeya on Friday October 20, 2017 @10:21AM (#15515980)

The etymology of the word (think deserted island) would imply it has more to do with the lack of life than the reason for a lack of life.

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Re:Iceland's attempts to replant its forests by mitchtbaum on Friday October 20, 2017 @10:47AM (#15516184)

Etymology of desert:

from Latin desertus, from desero (“abandon”)

From dē- (“away, from”) +‎ serō (“I bind, join”).

From Proto-Italic sizō, from Proto-Indo-European si-sh₁-, the reduplicated present of *seh₁- (“to sow”).

https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/desert#Etymology_3

https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/desero#Latin

https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/sero#Latin

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Re:Iceland's attempts to replant its forests by quotemstr on Friday October 20, 2017 @04:05PM (#15518761)

Right. That's the sense (solitude) of "desert" in Tacitus's famous quip about the Romans: "they make a desert and call it peace".

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Re:Iceland's attempts to replant its forests by guelo on Friday October 20, 2017 @12:23PM (#15517002)

In verb and adjective form anything can be deserted, a husband deserting his wife, a deserted village.

In noun form I've heard of things like food deserts to describe urban area without grocery or restaurants. Also places like Antartica are sometimes described as deserts. Also ocean deserts to describe areas without fish.

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Re:Iceland's attempts to replant its forests by Sharlin on Friday October 20, 2017 @03:51PM (#15518678)

Antarctica is a desert by the strict "low precipitation" definition. The Dry Valleys are some of the driest places on Earth.

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Re:Iceland's attempts to replant its forests by will_brown on Friday October 20, 2017 @10:53AM (#15516232)

There is a very famous race series for runners called the 4 Deserts. One race, called the Last Desert, takes place in Antarctica. It may surprise you, like it did me - in fact blew my mind - to learn Antarctica is the largest desert in the World.

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Re:Iceland's attempts to replant its forests by cromulent on Friday October 20, 2017 @11:30AM (#15516527)

Antarctica also has the McMurdo dry valleys with no snow or ice.

https://www.atlasobscura.com/places/mcmurdo-dry-valleys

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Re:Iceland's attempts to replant its forests by abrowne on Friday October 20, 2017 @11:04AM (#15516326)

But Antarctica is dry, while Iceland is wet.

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Re:Iceland's attempts to replant its forests by bagacrap on Friday October 20, 2017 @12:27PM (#15517035)

So I suppose almost every planet in the galaxy is a desert planet.

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