It has been more than years since I wrote the post: “ Gaia’s Cardiovascular System: The Manifestation of a Sick Planet ”. I was referring to drainage basins as systems or geo-ecosystems as a whole. What has changed since then? Personally I would modify the second sentence to the following “ a Dying Planet ”. In our relationship with nature, this meaning of Murphy’s Law prevails . As a species, human beings generate more and more waste as well as desolation, partly due to our foolishness and partly due to demographic growth itself and the tendency to move towards the coasts, that is, the littorization of populations.

The dunes are well known to everyone

although it would be better to speak of dune ridges , since they transform their habitats as they move away from the coastline . These treasure a very idiosyncratic fauna and vegetation due to their singularities, such as the properties of the sandy soils that soil scientists call Arenosols and whose India WhatsApp Number Data characteristics and geography we have told you about in previous posts . Sands are very permeable, they retain practically no water, and they do not exactly have the best properties to offer nutrients to plants . That is, we are talking about soils that in practice can locally suffer from serious water deficits and are not exactly fertile . Nor should we forget salinity . In the past, geobotanists and soil scientists distinguished three types of dunes by their coloration, which, in this case, is very informative.

The former consist of the youngest sands

Whose dispersed grains move to and fro of the wind and gravity, which is why plant rooting is absent or highly precarious. the vegetation (also keep in mind the strong winds that may temporarily prevail over them). In the second line the gray ones appeared, their color being due to the Italy WhatsApp Number List beginning of plant colonization and the impression left on the soil by the slightly decomposed plant remains. The coverage is significantly greater than in the white ones, so the soil properties improved. And finally, inland, the dunes were classified as brown, containing soils darkened by the contribution of necromass and humification of part of it, forming aggregates more suitable for retaining water and nutrients. The vegetation cover was very high or complete .