Aerosols are desert soils, not caused by climate change, so may not require recovery. But you can plant native desert plants :)

Dear Octavian,

many thanks for your question. It is interesting that you qualify/specify your query by explicitly stating that "recovery" shouldn't include irrigation. This makes things a lot more difficult, of course. Without artificial irrigation (in the place of sufficient natural precipitation and/or run-off), many stretches of land that have been subject to desertification will simply not be able to recover. Notwithstanding these considerations, I would say that planting specimens of taxa that make up typical pioneering vegetation in such environments may be a viable option - perhaps in conjunction with certain means of natural soil enrichement (e.g., aeolian transport). Especially in the latter context, it will be important to "hedge" the initial soil to be developed in order to stabilize it, support the growth of pioneer plants and to prevent erosion. Together with mechanical means of shading, even tiny amounts of vaporized water in the air may be harnessed. In the middle-term, letting the edaphon (pedofauna) do its natural work will also greatly advance soil development! Just some ideas...

In which part of the world are you conducting your research/practical work on Arenosols?

Best,

Julius

My two cents.

On man-made drift sands in the temperate zone. Seeding/planting suitable pioneer trees under cover of branches or other organic material to control drifting and evaporation as well as providing a "sponge" did the job.

In other conditions, create micro-catchments, e.g. bunding, ridge-and-furrow, to concentrate the scarce precipitation. Planting trees in the micro catchments, requires watering once in the growing season for the first 2-3 years. Effective in sloping terrain (e.g. Cabo Verde). However, I do not know a success story on arenosols.

In both cases, exclusion of grazing and other harvesting of vegetation needs to be implemented. Not so easy in many situations.

Building concrete structures to capture run-off in such environments is in my experience ineffective, if not counterproductive.