• Submitted by: Luis Manuel Mazorra
• Science and Technology
• 04 / 01 / 2012

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The floors are 35 years Cubans being protected by the Soil Station Guantanamo scientific institution which has developed a hard work that has earned international recognition and be a role model for the scientific community of the province.
These will include the award Saving the drylands, which contributed a leading role in the creation of technological projects package dedicated to combating salinity, secular phenomenon Guantanamo Valley, the main source of food for the sixth most populated city in Cuba.
The risk map of soil degradation Guantanamo among the achievements of the scientific community of the Cuban easternmost region, the most affected in the archipelago by drought and other phenomena that lead to desertification.
Researchers Baisre Juan, San Loy Diosnel, Irina and Oscar Fuentes Borges noted in that work, completed in the late 90's past, how biological degradation, among others, the most damaging to the territory, located in almost 600 000 hectares, followed by chemistry, disseminated in the third part of that extension.
Wind erosion, salinity and various physical phenomena also affect soil integrity Guantanamo, the only natural body that contains all the chemical elements of the classification and Mendeleev periodic table.
Cartographic documents made in the territory are valuable tools in the defense of the environment, including maps of salinity in the valley of Guantanamo and the detailed outline of desalination, the latter with the assistance of the National Institute of Water Resources.
These works are among the coordinated actions to stop the spread of harmful these processes and are part of the rehabilitation of the coastal strip Caimanera-Maisi, considered the driest part of the archipelago by the marked predominance of evaporation over precipitation.
Drought conditions are abnormally dry period, long enough for the lack of rain causes the water balance.
Meanwhile, desertification is similar to skin disease: impoverished areas thousands of kilometers arise nearest desert, grow, coalesce and do life forms disappear before flowering.
The latter, unlike drought (anomaly, effect on climate) is due to human activities, mainly agricultural practices wrong, with disastrous effect in arid, semiarid and dry sub-humid, while drought is the anomalous situation climate.
A handful of soil, extent not covered or the old metric system or the existing (International Units) has more people living beings existed on earth: about one billion bacteria, nematodes and myriads of 25 kilometers fungal tissue.
Such is the importance of the environment and safeguard the human body's natural for future generations, and that current can be used sustainably.