Greening the Desert with Bamboo

Beautifying the city or public facilities is increasingly prevalent today. In addition to adding beauty so that residents or the community increasingly like it, beautifying the city and public facilities is also designed to function to add freshness to the air and shade, namely by greening it with suitable plants. Cities or public facilities that are hot and arid because there are no leafy plants are certainly not attractive. Moreover, a city that will be built in a desert area, greening is absolutely necessary.

Bamboo is an adaptive plant that can even be planted in marginal lands including desert lands. And because of the need to beautify the city, ornamental bamboo species are more suitable. There are a number of ornamental bamboo species that can be an option. The beauty factor related to plant design and the city layout concept is a consideration for the selection of these ornamental bamboo species. And this bamboo planting can be done massively, especially for large desert areas so that it is green and beautiful. It is the kingdom of Saudi Arabia that will make a futuristic city in desert land costing around $ 500 billion even with the Saudi Green Initiave (SGI) program which intends to fight climate change targeting planting 10 billion trees throughout Saudi Arabia so that the use of bamboo can be an option interesting. Saudi Arabia is currently economically dependent on the oil and gas sector 56% with a vision of 2030 also reducing dependence on its oil and gas sector and pursuing the success of the UAE which is only 34%.

Compared to ASEAN countries, namely trade and investment cooperation with Malaysia, Singapore and Thailand, the three countries in ASEAN surpass Indonesia and these Middle Eastern countries. The performance of Indonesia's investment and trade cooperation relations is indeed concerning compared to the three countries in ASEAN. Indonesia still fails to identify opportunities with a country that has the purchasing power and economic capability that has the highest income in the world. The oil and gas and non-oil and gas trade deficit between Indonesia and Saudi Arabia reached 60%. Supplying the need for bamboo seeds as well as creating plantations can be one of the efforts to reduce the trade deficit.

Meanwhile, if the goal is to green the desert or barren areas for the production of biomass as industrial raw material, then the choice of bamboo species is also different for the purpose of beauty of the city. Specific bamboo species can be selected for this purpose. The factors of altitude, the type of industry to be made are several things for selecting the type of bamboo to be planted or used for example for bioenergy or biomaterials. Wood-based industries in general can be replaced with bamboo.

Post Mining Land Reclamation With Bamboo

Bamboo is a tree that is easy to grow, tall quickly and has many benefits. One of them is the use of bamboo trees for post-mining land reclamation. Damaged and barren post-mining land is indeed not easy to plant directly. Certain treatments or efforts are needed so that the land can be planted with certain plants. When the land has become fertile soil, of course almost all plants can be planted on the land. And to achieve these conditions it takes time and a process that is not short.

Soil improvement efforts in the sense of improving soil fertility are the first thing to do so that plants can grow well on the land. Plants that can be planted at this stage are also only certain types of plants such as pioneer plants in the form of fast growing plants such as legumes. And bamboo as a group of grass plants is also easy to plant and grow on marginal lands such as post-mining land. Availability of water, adequate nutrients, pH or adequate soil acidity are some of the things needed to achieve optimal growth.

As an illustration, sand is a bad planting medium because there are almost no nutrients in it and this is almost the same as the condition of post-mining land in general. Substances or organic materials need to be added so that they become fertilizers or nutrients for the land. Animal dung is the best organic material for this, so integration with livestock is the best concept for post-mining land reclamation. Biochar with its various advantages also needs to be added to the land. Biochar can be produced from biomass wastes from plantations, agriculture and forestry for this purpose. The use of biochar on a wide scale can also provide income in the form of carbon credits because biochar is applied to the soil as a carbon sink with carbon sequestration.

Bamboo trees as a type of grass plant have fibrous roots. Large bamboo clumps have a large network of fibrous roots as well. The success of bamboo roots is one of the keys to bamboo growth. The use of biochar in bamboo nurseries will also improve the roots of the bamboo seedlings produced. While in bamboo plantations, the use of biochar also has many benefits, especially on post-mining land the results will look more real, such as maintaining moisture, more available nutrients, not acidic soil pH and so on. Biochar is useful for improving soil fertility, so it can be used in nurseries and plantations.

Currently a number of mining companies have carried out land reclamation with these trees, but most of them are still testing and do not yet have a comprehensive concept. Post-mining land reclamation with bamboo in Indonesia is estimated to start in 2010 or has been going on for about 12 years until now. A number of bamboo species have also been identified as suitable for the post-mining area. Scale up or capacity enlargement is an important and current challenge, especially when it is supported by information on 12 years of reclamation with these bamboo trees. With this capacity expansion, besides bamboo production, commercial production can also be achieved, the application of biochar will also find its optimum benefits, namely improving soil fertility and carbon sinks (carbon sequenstration).

The use of bamboo in particular is an aspect that has not received serious attention in these reclamation projects. Whereas only with the use of bamboo which is a plantation product can the reclamation effort be known to provide economic benefits or not. The lack of serious attention to the use of bamboo is thought to be because the bamboo reclamation is still in the experimental stage with a small area. But if it has been pursued professionally, the economic aspect will become an important concern.

The use of bamboo, for example, is to make people's houses around the mine. With bamboo treated first and also using the art of building architecture, the bamboo house produced will be of high quality, in the sense of being sturdy and beautiful and far from being cheap. This will reduce the use of certain wood for houses, some of which have limited types, such as ironwood in Kalimantan. Indeed, there are many ways to use the bamboo, but it is necessary to choose the best one based on the related conditions and situations. Ruminant farming, especially for the production of organic matter or land fertilizers, will also require cages or in rotational grazing, poles for paddock will also be required. The cages and poles can also be made with these bamboo products.

And when bamboo production is used for biomass production and then used for biochar production, it is also technically possible. But economically, it is necessary to study whether it also provides benefits, both from the effect of improving soil fertility and carbon credit. In this case, the most important thing is the production of the biomass itself so that the bamboo species that produce the most biomass are selected. The more soils that can be repaired with biochar treatment, the more land that can be recovered so that it becomes productive land. When the soil is fertile again, various food crops are also very possible to be planted on the land. The increasing population also demands more food needs, so food production needs to be increased, including the use of these recoverable lands.