Sometimes words fall hopelessly short. This might explain the silences between the two botanists as their vehicle crunches over a gravelly Richtersveld moonscape, a desert that straddles the South African and Namibian border along the Orange River. “We’ve just arrived in the Namaskluft,” says Wendy Foden, recording her observations in a tone that’s oddly neutral, given the circumstances. “We’re driving through an avenue of mostly dead Aloidendron ramosissimum,” she goes on above the growl of her pickup truck’s diesel engine. “Never seen anything like this.” Later, she will say it was like driving through a graveyard. Each dead tree is a tombstone, marking where the bushy aloe once thrived. Each is a sun-cured skeleton, long having shed the fleshy canopy of olive-green leaves that were reservoirs of water. Like any graveyard, some of the tombstones have toppled. “There’s a live one … But there’s literally hundreds of dead … This is insane.” The Namaqualand is getting hotter. Higher temperatures and the recent drought have likely accelerated the desertification processes caused by decades of heavy grazing and mining, where many sites have not been adequately rehabilitated. Once sand becomes mobile, it can be lethal to downwind plants. Image by Leonie Joubert for Mongabay. The Grasvlakte — the “grassy plains” — between Steinkopf, Port Nolloth and Eksteenfontein has become a focal point for study. This once-abundant grazing area is swallowing one farmhouse and surrounding buildings. Some say the dune is the result of the recent drought. Other farmers say it’s caused by…This article was originally published on Mongabay
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