Parsons School of Design graduate Zihao Fang has developed Aquastor, a biodegradable vessel designed to fight the spread of deserts that's made using only readily available local resources.
Aquastor's design was informed by research from Princeton University that shows termite mounds can prevent fertile land from degrading into arid desert by storing moisture and nutrients in their subterranean tunnels.
Much like a termite mound, the biomimicking vessel is formed from a mixture of organic and inorganic desert materials, including clay, sand, leaf litter and discarded exoskeletons.
Aquastor is a desertification remediation vessel
Its hollow, water-retaining construction resembles two stacked truncated cones, with the smaller one designed to be buried in the ground. This enables it to funnel moisture deep into the soil, Fang said, while improving air circulation and lowering temperatures near the surface. Over time, the vessel will break down completely to provide nutrients to the soil.
Taken together, he argues this creates a low-cost, low-tech, local method for supporting the growth of plant life in the world's drylands.
The hollow vessel is shaped like two stacked truncated cones
These make up 40 per cent of the Earth's total land surface and are increasingly threatened by desertification, due to a combination of global warming and human activities such as deforestation and unsustainable farming practices.
"While land degradation has occurred throughout history, the p...