Israelis Poured Billion Tons of Unsalted Water Into a Desert, Few Years Later Result Was Unexpected

Israel is known for its innovative approach to pretty much anything it does this is particularly true when it comes to water as the country's geography doesn't give it many options the water supply network made up of miles of pipes channels tunnels and reservoirs along with stations that handle water purification Israel has all of this because there's no other way to manage it and while water is an incredibly valuable resource Israel constantly pours huge amounts of it into the desert of course the country isn't planning to create a humanitarian crisis by wasting precious water for nothing things are much more interesting than that let's try to figure out what's really going on here this is the Israeli ngev desert the conditions there are pretty similar to those in other harsh deserts around the world the average daily maximum temperature throughout the year varies from 88° F to 77° F depending on the part of the desert the average daily minimum ranges from 66° F to 57° F however at certain times in the ngev it gets so hot that it's almost unbearable to be there in the summer months the temperature can reach almost 122° F what about the precipitation well it's a typical desert so there's practically none in the southern part of the ngev desert The Situation's especially Bleak in summer there's traditionally no precipitation at all and during the rest of the year the total doesn't Exceed 2 in on average only about . 9 in of rain falls annually in the northern part things are a bit better in the summer nothing falls from the sky either but at other times of the year rainfall can reach up to 1. 6 to 2 in which is incredibly high for this region the annual average in this part of the ngev is over 8 in for comparison the Sahara Desert gets about 4 in of rain a year so the northern ngev has it somewhat lucky as for the desert's terrain it's mostly Sandy Dunes some of which can reach up to 100 ft High along with Rocky Dusty mountains and deep craters there's also sparse vegetation trying to be a bit more diverse with small bushes and occasional short trees do you know what's the worst thing about the ngv desert for Israel so let's take a look the country's total area is only about 8,100 square miles that's really small to be more specific Israel ranks 148th in terms of land area in the world meanwhile the ngev desert covers a staggering 5,000 square miles that means this Sandy rocky area with limited vegetation takes up more than half of the country's total land in this situation Israel definitely needed to come up with something to make use of the land that under normal circumstances wouldn't be good for anything useful David benan a very significant figure in Israel's history kept saying that the ngev needed to be developed he didn't live to see the radical changes but eventually the desert started to literally transform this wouldn't have been possible if the country hadn't begun supplying the desert areas with enormous amounts of water in particular the Israelis began providing the ngev with with water through their National Water Supply system the main task of the project completed in 1964 was to pump water from Israel's most important Reservoir the Sea of Galilee to the densely populated Center and dry south of the country for this a system was created with a total length of about 80 Mi consisting of giant pipes open channels tunnels reservoirs and large pumping stations capable of pumping up to 19 million gallons every hour or 4 49 million gallons of water per day at first it might seem like the system isn't really supplying water to the ngev the pipeline only runs through the western part of the desert however that's just the main pipeline there are plenty of secondary branches these go further into the desert reaching places like Bayer cheva a city with over 200,000 people by the way it's one of the top 10 most populated cities in the country yes hundreds of thousands of people live in the desert city of Israel it's a great indicator of how well devel the water supply system is and how it helps forget that the house is somewhere among the desert Dunes where only some camels and Nomads could survive this is how water was supplied to the desert until the Sea of Galilee freshwater Reservoir was hit by a drought the freshwater resource levels were constantly monitored and the solution was to rely on desalination plans you can see them here on the map along with the National Water System their capacity starts at 23 billion gallons of desalinated water and reaches 39 billion gall Island at the most advanced station called soric as a result the Israelis connected each of the stations to the main water system through infrastructure worth $250 million the Sea of Galilee began to be replenished with water from the Mediterranean Sea when the dry south meaning the neev desert started to be filled with hundreds of millions of gallons of water that had been completely unusable not long ago by the way Israel's main water supply system is not just a piece of infrastructure on a massive scale but also an effective solution water losses are only 3% to compare in the UK this figure reaches 20% in Bulgaria it's 50% and in Romania it's 70% so practically every gallon of water from the Mediterranean Sea that's desalinated is used to its full potential the ngv also gets its water from underground specifically from the mountain aquifer it's safe yield meaning the amount of water that can be taken out without harm is about 95 billion gallons per year however Israel as a whole doesn't have a lot of water resources and theg even less which is why as of 2023 twice as much was being pumped out of the aquifer about 158 billion gallons of water let's put it this way pumping a lot of water out of aquifers is generally very risky because they don't have enough time to replenish and could be completely drained especially in Israel's climate but there's another issue with underground water sources right beneath them lies a body of salt water which could contaminate the fr freshwat in the aquafer because of this the country and the ngev desert will increasingly focus on high-tech desalination instead of pumping water this will help improve the security of the underground water source and the last water source supplying Israel in the ngev desert is already used water starting from the 2000s the country's invested more than $750 million in this field creating 67 large processing plants 10 of which recycle over 56% of the country's Wastewater just imagine 87% of all the water Israelis drain into the sewer system is then turned into something that can be used again that's pretty impressive compared to say the us there this figure doesn't even reach 10% the main Reclamation system in Israel is shaon located in the Tel Aviv area it treats about 97 million gallons of waste water a day some of which then flows to the ngav the treated water is pumped through a pipeline to irrigate 60% of The Greenery in this harsh desert region and here we finally come to what Israel has partially managed to turn its dry Southern territory into to start with it's important to note that desalinated underground and sewage water played a major role in creating a forest yep you read that right part of the Arid Israeli desert was transformed into a green space where trees now grow this is the Yer forest located in the northern part of the ngev desert and it covers an area of 11 Square mil and this is actually a record it's the biggest for Forest ever planted in Israel the total number of trees the Israeli have planted in this area reaches an Incredible 4 million if they hadn't greened the area this way it would only be home to low bushes like Jerusalem sage and hairy bread grass but now it's a forest that's 90% Aleppo Pine but you know the truth is that planting Pines and other trees here wasn't just for beauty or to make people feel confused like a coniferous forest at the edge of the desert what Yer was planted for a much bigger and more important goal to stop the spread of the desert and it's working theer was planted 60 years ago and it's still here green fresh and stopping the Sands of the ngev Desert from spreading further also the forest is literally an impassible wall for carbon in the air meaning the trees act as a sort of trap for over 15 years research has been conducted here showing that Yer absorbs an astonishing amount of the universally hated carbon as much as forests in wetter regions this is where their service still doesn't end because youer is the reason why rare local rainfall evaporates less the trees block the Sun so the Rays don't reach the water of course people in advanced Israel couldn't help but use the forest for research as well for example Yer is part of the NASA flux net project a Global Network of microm meteorological Towers used to measure the exchange of carbon dioxide water vapor and energy between land ecosystems in the atmosphere the Arava Institute for Environmental Studies is also operating here focusing on crops like dates and grapes that are grown in the vicinity of the Yer Forest why these studies are part of a project to bring new crops to dry and salty regions however of course there are certain problems for example if the forest has been growing here for 60 years that doesn't mean it's been completely loss free scientists have found that 5 to 10% of the forest dried up and died due to a series of extreme droughts over the past decade moreover the forest is not recovering due to ongoing climate issues as well as the grazing of sheep and goats which are always eager to eat young Pine saplings another problem is based on a simple truth a tree no matter how good it is isn't always a good thing the area where Yer was planted has never been a forest so the local species are adapted to shrubs they need open Landscapes to dive after their prey plus heavy machinery and herbicides used when planting trees are probably not great news for the fragile soil of drylands because its crust gets destroyed and there are small plants lyans mushrooms they're food for insects reptiles and birds so you get the idea everything has its downsides what other reason does the ngev have to show off for example it's agricultur is doing really well though actually agricultur is pretty much developed all over Israel Israel is one of the most efficient producers of cow's milk 3430 gallons per cow compared to 2640 Gall in North America and 1580 Gall in Europe the Tomato yield in Israel is 300 tons per 2.

4 Acres compared to the global average of 50 tons per 2. 4 Acres the country also produces 262 tons of citrus per 2. 4 Acres compared to 243 tons in North America and 21 tons in Europe in the ngev farmers also grow sunflowers wheat melons chickpeas pomegranates almonds and olives all right if that doesn't surprise you they even manage to grow cotton in the desert one of the most water hungry crops you can plant there are even some figures provided by the farmers of sabar K in good years they managed to harvest 3.

5 tons of sunflowers 7 tons of Wheat and 6. 5 tons of cotton doesn't sound like a lot we're talking about yield per 2. 4 Acres so these are actually pretty decent numbers here's the total value of fruit production in different countries it's like GDP but just for agriculture so Israel's in first place followed by Pakistan Portugal New Zealand and this is despite the fact that these countries have much larger ler land areas than Israel all the other countries on the list are also bigger but the total area is one thing Israel is a country where more than half of its territory is covered by the ngev desert dry harsh and all that however it's this Southern desert that makes up 40% of the country's entire agriculture how do the Israelis pull it off by now you figured out that the country has a sophisticated water system which delivers desalinated water from the Mediterranean Sea to the neav they also use underground water for agriculture and let's not forget about Wastewater it's turned into something usable for the field so it's sent to the farmers but if the water were just taken and poured into a dry desert the consumption would be gigantic no system even Israel could handle such a task Innovations and agriculture help save water the most important one is of course drip irrigation which started gaining widespread use in Israel since the 1950s thanks to one of the founders of mecat the country's main water organization what's the idea behind this method in this case it's not just about flooding all the beds with water the liquids Supply directly to the root zone of the plants in small portions with The Regulators being the drip dispensers this kind of irrigation brings a lot of benefits like lower water usage reduced erosion weed growth and much more of course there's one downside higher cost compared to traditional irrigation methods however in the case of farming in the ngev this drawback isn't a big deal at the very least because the thanks to drip irrigation the country feeds itself and earns money from exports and at most it also involves fish farming which just as much brings in money and feeds the population yes they really grow fish in the desert a few decades back scientists found that in certain spots under Aid lands 50 to 100 ft below the surface there's water at 104° F with low salt content thousands of years ago the desert was much wetter rain fell from the sky and the water soaked into the ground gathered and warmed up then scientists showed that this water makes an ideal environment for species like tilapia bream baram catfish Guppies clownish and many more the fish isn't just raised for food it's released into the water where it releases metabolites that are very nutritious for plants the enriched water can then be used to grow crops over its lifetime plants absorb the metabolites through their Roots essentially cleaning the water and it returns to almost its original state in short a closed loop system a commercial fish farm in the ngev desert with a production capacity of 2,000 tons of baramundi per year it's located on an 86 acre plot above a geothermal water source with a temperature of 98° F the water's pumped into internal systems then used to grow baramundi and a small amount of water is discharged beyond the site thus starting its role in agriculture with the help of a special system the water is reused for irrigation of nearby Olive Groves now let's remember David Ben gurian again he hoped that the lower desert part of the country would eventually help the North in terms of desalination and renewable energy as for desalination the South really does contribute because they've already studied how such water can be used in Aid areas moreover benguan probably didn't suspect that the Technologies of Israel would be used by the whole world but what about energy the ngev desert helps out here because it gets a huge amount of sunlight and has vast used land perfect for implementing projects related to solar energy and here's one of the main examples the ashim power plant located south of the most populated city in the ngev desert Bay or cheva it consists of three sections each with a different technology the first is a parabolic trough plant with a capacity of 121 megaw there are numerous reflectors here that concentrate sunlight onto a pipe with a heat transfer fluid the thermal energy in this system can be stored for up to 4.