Abstract
MUCH has been heard in recent years of soil erosion, due to a variety of causes, emanating usually in ill-advised use of the land. In Africa this has been shown to cause the spread of waste or desertic conditions. In a paper in the Geographical Journal of November, on desert versus forest in Eastern Africa, Mr. E. J. Wayland points out that there are climatic deserts and climatic forests and that each will retain its characteristics in spite of man's interference; man can do little to change the aspects of such lands. However, between the essential desert and the essential forest there is forest land which on its desert side is (or was, since in Africa most has been destroyed) a zone of forest-desert equilibrium, disturbable, to the desert's advantage, by Nature or by man. This is the zone of counter forest, and on the true forest side shows a marginal belt where the forest holds as long as natural conditions have sway. In this belt, however, man-made desert is not merely possible but is very general in Africa. All African forest areas with one or two long dry seasons and a rainfall of not more than 30 inches a year may be regarded as marginal in character, and all such areas are liable to soil erosion. Mr. Wayland does not believe that desert will or can spread into the essential forest: the counter forest acts as a buffer that holds in check the spread of the desert conditions.
Article PDF
Rights and permissions
About this article
Cite this article
Spread of Desertic Conditions. Nature 147, 85 (1941). https://doi.org/10.1038/147085b0
Issue Date:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/147085b0