There is a hill in the middle of Arabia's Empty Quarter at Lat N. 18 and Long. E 53 that looks like it is a relict stand of natural vegetation left over from 6,000 years ago, before domesticated grazing animals turned the area from a savanna to the desert it is today. This area along with the mountains above Salalah, Oman appear to be the only remains of the pre-grazed ecosystem in this part of Arabia, and wanted to know if anyone has named this spot and is studying the vegetation.
The desert is not because of grazing animals but because of natural climate shifts.
The deserts that stretch from India to Arabia then across North Africa are all man-made via our domesticated animals grazing whatever grows in those areas to dust each year, and that produces atmospheric dust in the form of Dust Clouds that act to stop the monsoon rain cloud formation, even though the ancient moisture tracks are still moving over those deserts and that water vapor that could produce clouds is visible by satellites, like at http://www.ssec.wisc.edu/data/comp/wvmoll.html
Every day, there are billion of tons of water vapor moving over the Sahara desert, but not able to form a single rain cloud because of the lack of natural vegetation which changes the dew point against rain cloud formation, plus the Dust Clouds are also keeping the clouds from forming, plus the Pseudomonas-producing tropical trees and shrubs were all cut down thousands of years ago for firewood, so no Pseudomonas is in the area to contribute to rain cloud formation any more.
This little piece shown above in the middle of the Empty Quarter, if it is a piece of the original vegetation from pre-domesticated grazing animal times, and shows how a small piece can still maintain itself and create its own weather and rainfall to survive.
This seems to be the minimum-sized piece to produce climate change on the smallest size scale within a desert that is within the range of the monsoon moisture track. So if someone wanted to revegetate these desert areas to increase the annual rainfall, and lower the overall temperatures, plus cut the Dust Cloud formation that keep the monsoon rains away for 5,000 years, this looks like the right size to start with.
http://www.ecoseeds.com/cool.html
Have you contacted any of the Universities in Egypt, Saudi Arabia or even Israel to see if they might know of any research going on concerning this location? Or research going on concerning revegetation of the desert? It would seem to me that if this is truely a relic stand collecting seed and genetic material should be seriously considered by someone. It would not take a very large incident, natural or man-made, to wipe out such a small area.
This would be a totally fascinating project!
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