This has sometimes had a positive effect, preventing the rural exodus and the spread of deserts in agricultural areas.
Launched in 1999, Terra carries instruments that concentrate on landmass studies, monitoring vegetation and the spread of deserts, among other things.
Without such a deal, scientists warn that world temperatures will increase by more than 2C by the end of the century, triggering ice cap melting, sea-level rises, widespread flooding, the spread of deserts and devastating storms.
But much of this is expected to be given to other agencies (the State Forestry Administration, for example, deals with stemming the spread of deserts) or to the local environmental-protection bureaus, which, being answerable to local governments, are crippled by conflicts of interest.Little of the money, complains a SEPA official, is used to curb pollution.
In 1996 students developed a space-based program to detect and stop the spread of deserts.
On the one hand, rapid economic development and an emphasis on immediate economic output -- as opposed to sustainable growth -- have contributed to the spread of deserts, the decline of fresh water supplies, and a consumer culture that encourages disposable goods and blind consumption at the expense of the environment.
Starting with the United States, the world's militaries must devote at least 50percentt of their budgets to developing and implementing technologies to stop the spread of deserts, to revive oceans, and to transform completely the destructive industrial systems of today into a new economy that is sustainable in the true sense of the word.
Aridification began in the Miocene (c. 15 MYA) and gradually led to the disappearance of forests and to the spread of deserts over much of the present continent.
It paints a broad picture of how carbon emissions will alter global temperatures, which will rise by between 3C to 5C by the end of the century, triggering storms of increasing severity, the acidification of seas and the spreading of deserts.
