Terraform (literal meaning is Earth-shaping) a word originally coined for transforming a planet or moon to make habitable for human existence. The two planets closest to ours, Venus and Mars, are not fit for human life even for a few seconds. Venus is hotter than inside a kitchen oven set on high and an atmospheric pressure at the surface 90 times that of Earth. Mars on the other hand is frigidly cold with an extremely thin atmosphere. Another crucial difference between our planet and our two neighbours is that the Earth has ongoing tectonic activity with continental drift creating valleys and mountains. Ours is an evolving planet that is constantly changing.
At this present time, and into the foreseeable future, we do not have the technology or economic means to terraform another planet or moon. Our time and energy is far better spent improving our planet's environment.
When we talk about improving the environment it is usually about fixing something that has been damaged by recent human activity. We plant trees where trees once stood, make efforts to stop soil erosion due to land clearing, mine site rehabilitation after the mine has closed and stopping toxic waste entering the ecosystem to name a few. Clearly it is far easier not to damage or touch the environment in the first place. This is obviously not that easy with a growing world wide population consuming more and natural resources and people requiring a place to live.
I believe we are at a point in time where we should improve or make more habitable tracts of land that haven’t been significantly touched by human activity and yet are quite barren. To modify land that is sparse in plant and animal life to woodland abundant with both. German climate scientist Professor Hans Schellnhuber has recently stated (14-07-2011) That there is no better country on the planet that would be better than Australia for extensive tree planting to create Carbon sinks, or in his words carbon farming.
It is relatively easy to plant trees where there were once trees but to plant and maintain large trees in areas where there has not been a forest or large trees in thousands of years is far harder. It is a tougher assignment but once achieved will be far more satisfying and of greater importance to the planet as far as capturing Carbon Dioxide emission's.
If you were to look at all the land masses on our planet, Australia stands out as an ideal place to create more woodland or forests. Most of the Australian interior is flat semi arid country which can not support the amount of wild life that the other populated continents enjoy. The operational goal of Terraform Australia is to create woodland areas that draw in local animals and plants whilst minimising any short term Environmental impact.
The obvious ingredients for a treed area are enough water and sunshine and good soil. Whilst this is correct for water and we have enough sunshine, the most important criteria for soil is the amount of soil. There needs to be at least 1.2m (4 feet) of soil and broken rock for a tree to mature in to a grown tree. While soil quality is important, it will improve naturally by decaying leaf litter, bird droppings and burrowing insects etc. once the woodland is established.
The depth of the soil is a very important but often over looked fact. Australia has an undisturbed layer of hardpan or caprock lying on or near the ground surface of large areas of the Australian Mainland. This hard pan is created in a process called cementation in which soil material such as calcium carbonate, silicates and iron precipitate and that layer hardens irreversibly. The porosity decreases gradually until no water can percolate through this layer and it resembles rock. It is not so important to know how it occurs; just to know this layer is a hard, smooth and as level as well pored concrete many metres thick when it is found on the flat plains of Australia.
These cemented layers of hard pan are an inherent feature of much of inland Australia with the hard pan layer typically 10 to 40cm (just over 1 foot) below ground surface in areas that that support shrubs and small trees. These vegetation areas are characterised by one tree type, and that tree is the mulga which is the only tree that can grow in such shallow soil. Because of the huge extent of Mulga through out Australia it is often called Mulga Country.
Terrafoming Australia involves breaking up this hard pan and allowing larger trees to grow and thus attracting animal and plant life to the area. It is not that we want to remove the mulga from the area, and every effort will be made not to disturb living trees, but to make the soil and depth of soil suitable for larger trees such as the native Eucalyptus tree to grow in to healthy mature trees. The Environmental impact on the existing environment will be gradual and as minimal as can be realistically achieved. Mulga country covers approximately 150 million hectares across Australia, about the the combined size of Spain, Italy and Turkey, and so allows for gradual change from predominantly Mulga to larger Eucalyptus trees.
Now that global warming and the rise in carbon dioxide in the atmosphere has become a very real concern to the international community our aim is to trap the the carbon in the form of large trees and associated plant life that comes with areas of wood lands. It will be relatively easy to worked out the net increase of carbon in areas that will benefit from our man made intervention. The Japanese conducted carbon sink experiments in areas of hardpan and Mulga in Western Australia where they totted up the amount of Carbon in a mature Mulga tree and the 30cm (1 foot) of soil in which it grew. Their trials showed that there would be far greater carbon sink if hard wood trees such as the Eucalyptus were the predominent tree in the area. Please visit the Japanese Experiment page and Economic Benefits page to see how Governments, Industry and individuals can all play there part in making for a green Australia and trapping carbon dioxide emmissions in Eucalypus hard wood trees.