Desert Dunes And Oasis Dreams – Midnight at oasisOnce oases supported human evolution. Now, the addiction to fountains, swimming pools and palm trees threatens our existence
Rebecca Lawton is a fluvial geologist and former river guide who writes about water in the West. Her latest book is Things I Never Told You: Stories (2022). She lives on Current Creek in California steelhead country.
Desert Dunes And Oasis Dreams
Seen from the air, the single terraced land with its straight borders and sharp edges looks like a green postage stamp affixed to a large manila envelope. Within its borders, a screen of trees hides the palatial estate, acres of emerald lawns, paved circular driveways, and vast marble fountains. Outside the quadrangle is a hot, rocky fan of tan alluvium uncultivated and waterless for half a kilometer to another such parcel, then another, then another. Around eight kilometers into the city centre, residences cluster together but mimic the lushness of the outlying territories with palm trees, water features and impossibly green grass.
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Downtown, glittering casinos, restaurants, luxury shops and lounges lure visitors along sun-drenched avenues. Waterfalls and viewing pools convey the feeling of an abundance of water, as if the length is supplied by a healthy amount of rainfall. With summer temperatures above 32 degrees Celsius (90 degrees Fahrenheit), one would never know that Las Vegas typically receives less than 11 centimeters of rain. Building an oasis on a desert resort requires more hands than a card shark playing a casino. But Las Vegas, like many other arid communities, routinely draws water for this purpose from underground or external systems — in this case, the Colorado River is impounded in Lake Mead, 50 kilometers away.
The green support of true oceans is a part of what humanity has experienced for thousands of years, when precious underground springs and aquifers almost reach the surface. For centuries, oases have marked the location of communities and trade routes. In recent generations, we’ve expanded the oasis habit by extending water into faux oases—like Las Vegas—into our built environment to complement what nature provides. But our human drive to transform deserts, to build oceans wherever our environment is arid, has resulted in 11th-hour water shortages and shortages worldwide.
, ‘what is left is wasted. In the geographic dictionary, a desert is an area that receives less than 25 centimeters of rain per year. They are the world’s largest polar deserts, each covering approximately 14 million square kilometers of snow, ice, and tundra in the Arctic or Antarctic. Then there is the Sahara, a 9 million square kilometer expanse of gravel, sand and desert that stretches across 13 countries and covers a quarter of the African continent. After that, the Arabian desert has an area of 2.5 million square kilometers and reaches six countries. Equal to one-fifth of the continent’s area, often inhospitable due to extreme temperatures and lack of water, deserts are also the setting for natural oceans, some of the most attractive land and water features on the planet.
The humid, fertile oasis zone consists of a central pool of water surrounded by water-dependent shrubs and trees, especially palms, which in turn are surrounded by a desert transition zone. In contrast to the vast expanses of the world’s deserts, oasis ecosystems are relatively minute, rare and precious, the largest measuring in dozens and hundreds, not millions, of square kilometers.
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Oases figure prominently in human existence and evolution. Early humans lived and hunted around surface water, associated with constant springs and pools that attracted wildlife and watered vegetation. Paleontologists studying ancient evidence
As discovered in Olduvai Gorge, Tanzania, our ancestors relied on isolated beaches in times of drought where other sources of drinking water were scarce.
Oases created bridges between large bodies of water, anthropologists hypothesize, allowing people to migrate from within and eventually out of Africa. Natural oceans determined the direction of trade routes and desert settlements. From the precise signs of groundwater on the banks of great rivers on the Colorado Plateau in North America to the earliest habitats indicated by the highland palm bush in the Sahara, water determines the communities and pathways in between.
The longest trade route of the 7,400-kilometer Silk Road through Africa, Asia, and Europe followed its route from well to well, relying on oasis communities such as Turpan in China and Sarkanded in Uzbekistan. The Darb el-Arba camel route between Egypt and Sudan, the Moroccan caravan route from Niger to Tangier, and the indigenous footpaths in the Mojave Desert in the American Southwest were all connected to the oasis and otherwise impassable.
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Over time, cultures have integrated the experience of rest and leisure into the built world. In ancient Rome
(small public and private baths) were created by a system of aqueducts leading from rivers and springs to most towns and villages. The public baths were the community centers of their day, where citizens met for conversation, bathing, bathing, and exercise. A Latin expression for the healthful properties of water.
He conveyed the philosophy that water baptism for recovery and renewal was central to health and good citizenship.
In the Roman culture, resort towns became popular elsewhere, their engineered aqueducts fed from naturally occurring mineral springs and shallow groundwater reservoirs. The community of Spa, Belgium gave its name to an internationally replicated immersion custom.
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In America – destinations that have been and are being developed to provide a break for those who want to ‘take the water’.
Recreating the healing experience of water in arid areas will take some work. Water must be carried from natural sources uphill, over man-made terraces, often to buildings or fenced areas where cement-lined swimming pools resemble grass-slope natural pools. The resort’s gardens were ordered, their mature trees loaded by cranes and crews, their water needs met by irrigation and a timed sprinkler system. The hot arid desert of the Las Vegas Valley, home to one of the world’s great rivers, offers a modern mirage—the illusion that we can turn the desert green while taking large amounts of water from elsewhere without paying a price.
For thousands of years, the ocean has repeatedly described itself to us as a refreshing dip in an open pool, a green palm frond shelter, and shade and refuge for the weary desert traveler. These are not just creature comforts; They strengthen health.
As it turns out, water immersion improves brain function by improving the blood’s ability to transport oxygen and nutrients to it. In the year In a study published in 2014 from the University of Western Australia
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People immersed in the heart at 30 degrees Celsius (86 degrees Fahrenheit) for 10 minutes experienced increased blood flow during the immersion.
Similarly, the green leaf of the oasis can promote well-being. Testing what nature-lovers have long assumed to be true, environmental psychology researchers measure the brain’s electrical response to green space. An article on the ‘urban brain’
In the year In 2015, subjects showed ‘lower frustration’ when entering natural environments and ‘higher engagement’ when leaving. Compared to mental responses in other zones such as shopping or business districts, the improved mental state measured in subjects moving along roads in green zones indicates a greater likelihood of recovery from stress.
Oasis helps us focus. The common experience of feeling a kind of brain fog in broad daylight is also unimaginable; It is real and measurable. Studies have shown that mammals, including humans, require a two- or three-fold increase in natural evaporation to maintain an adequate body temperature when exposed to the desert sun; Conversely, sliding into the shade increases performance and physiological measures. Arriving at the oasis at the end of a long day in the desert heat fulfills the simple and important task of preventing overheating. A 2011 study by the University of Copenhagen found that the brain’s temperature is 0.2 degrees Celsius higher than the rest of the body. In hot climates where there is no relief, we can’t or won’t do walking or other physical activities. Oasis’ easy rest keeps us going.
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With all this in mind, the resort or spa, a modern imitation of the ancient oasis, adds therapeutic treatment to the natural benefits of water, plants and refuge. Some benefit comes from the stimulation of endorphins, morphine-like molecules associated with the experience of deep pleasure. American neuroscientist and pharmacologist Candace Pert discovered that endorphins bind to opiate receptors not only in the body but also in the brain. Ultimately, an entire system of hormones and receptors was discovered in neuroscience laboratories, advancing the field of psychoneuroimmunology—the study of the interconnected brain and body circuits driving emotion, health, and disease. of
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