In a future world of rising oceans and depleted fossil fuels, imagine a plant that can thrive in desert conditions and be irrigated with saltwater. Imagine that this plant makes a healthy dish for humans -- fresh, steamed, or grounded up. And imagine if that plant could be converted into bio-fuels.
That plant is salicornia, also known as "sea pasparagus" or "samphire." The succulent is the subject of an L.A. Times piece by Mexico City correspondent Marla Dickerson, who follows a scientist named Carl Hodges to the remote Sonoran desert where Hodges is farming 1,000 acres of salicornia with diverted seawater. He already did it in Eritrea, and in Mexico, he's eyeing 12,000 acres more:
[Hodges] wants to channel the ocean into man-made "rivers" to nourish commercial aquaculture operations, mangrove forests and crops that produce food and fuel. This greening of desert coastlines, he said, could add millions of acres of productive farmland and sequester vast quantities of carbon dioxide, the primary culprit in global warming. Hodges contends that it could also neutralize sea-level rise, in part by using exhausted freshwater aquifers as gigantic natural storage tanks for ocean water.
Read the entire story here. * Previously, "Oceans rising: So long, South Florida!" and "Anything to stay cool: Picturing a planet without us."
* L.A. Times photo by Brian Vander Brug.