BIO-GEOENGINEERING IN ARID AREAS BY AFFORESTATION

Bio-geoengineering as climate engineering technique attempts to use plants, basically afforestation to modify the Earth's climate especially in arid regions.This is possible due to the fact that planting of forest plantation in the desert can go a long way in altering the climatic conditions of the area particularly the energy partitioning and balance.

My study involves the use of Oman as a case study in which studies were made on a small scale plantation in the area using Jojoba plants (test) due to its low rainfall requirement and high temperature resistance. Also a simultaneous control without plantation was set up. However, the study showed that a temperature decrease and a precipitation increase over the plantation forest. This was as a result of change in the net radiation and in the energy partitioning between sensible heat flux, ground heat flux and latent heat flux with the later increasing significantly on the forest plantation.

However, for effective Bio-Geoengineering, Climate mitigation – modified temperature and precipitation, bioenergy – income and investment, carbon farming ‐ income via emission trading schemes, societal and political environment, modern desalination or wastewater irrigation, soil protection or regeneration and Marginal land(no food competition land) should be taken into consideration.