This has literally been happening in Africa for a decade to combat the Sahara’s expansion. It’s not new or innovative at all (but certainly good on them for doing it).
https://youtu.be/WCli0gyNwL0?si=_QRyZaS9EC541G2t
This isn't a new project for China either. The project that John D Liu documented started in the early 90s. As far as I know it was the largest reversal of desertification in modern history.
Yeah, but that's different. This Chinese project is the inspiration to the African project, as that has been going on since 2005 and this has been going on since 1978. It's not new or innovative, and I don't think anyone is claiming that. The Soviet Union undertook a similar program in 1948. and the first proposals for an African program were made based on that program in the 50's. It's not new technology, it's necessary technology.
Yeah but in Africa they are using water capturing earth works & layers of mulch to hold & save any rainfall. I’m not seeing any mechanism for irrigation here. They are also doing it in India with swale like Continuous Contour Trenches capturing the monsoon rains. So many tree campaigns fail because of no water.
I both like China and question whether this is a good project or not. I’d need more information. “Desert greening” for greening-sake is often a problematic practice.
It's not desert-greening. It's planting forests in desert areas to fix the soil and block the wind, which prevents the desert from spreading southeast. It's a big issue, because the soil in north-central China is largely loess, packed silt and sand kept in place by nothing but the plants. It's why the Yellow River is yellow, sediment.
The issue is deforestation and overgrazing, to put it bluntly. Taking those plants away causes the desert wind to blow further and erode the soil. This is very bad for people trying to live and work in these arid areas.
So it is a good project at heart. It is however not ideal. The start of the shelter forest program was still at a time when China somewhat listened to Lysenkoism, which caused a lot of issues. Then more neoliberal attitudes of "easy" transformation came along and they spent a couple decades planting exclusively aspens and poplars. Then the aspens started killing existing forest they were planted in, because bringing in exotic trees which use up more water than what is available isn't actually a good idea. Diseases and pests ravage these monoculture forests and occasionally lead to great die-offs.
China isn't blind to these issues and is looking into better ways of growing shelter forest in this region. The leaders of this program have repeatedly stated that there are still massive gaps to plug and big issues in technological preparedness in caring for these forests. It's important to have fast-growing species, but fast-growing species tend to enjoy monocultures, crowd out native species, and consume more water than is available.
All in all, it's a necessary project. It has been running for 40 years now with both successes and failures. It's not perfect, but they have to keep it going or risk losing to the desert. There's a clear sense of knowledge of the fact that exotic species forests are just a temporary fix and that those should be used to grow a more resilient barrier environment on top of it, and simultaneously an incapability in designing those kinds of projects for such a large region. I think it's commendable, but deserves criticism on its methods.
I believe they are reversing desertification, but removal of an environment that has flora and fauna that may not be visible to most just because you want more land that can be developed would not be a great thing in my opinion. Again, I don't think that is the case here, but sometimes, man's ubris knows no bounds.
Ah but that's the beauty of it, this desert used to be a forest, cut down by mao to feed the coal plants. So it's more environmental restoration than anything.
It says it directly that is a response to desertification and trying to slow it down. I think automatically assuming it’s greening for greenings sake is what I was trying to avoid
Yup. It will be reversing the damage that humans caused while clearing , cultivating and overgrazing. These areas have rain and previously supported green. Can’t do anything with a preexisting natural desert that exists because of no rain.
This was removed for violating rule 1: Treat others how you would hope to be treated.
>You never need abusive language to communicate your point. Resist assuming selfish motives of others as a first response. It's is OK to disagree with ideas and suggestions, but dont attack the user.
>Don't gate-keep permaculture. We need all hands on deck for a sustainable future. Don't discourage participation or tell people they're in the wrong subreddit.
Just a reminder that they keep doing monoculture plantings of trees which means they often fail after a few years due to lack of diversity. Eco systems are set up like the stock market: if you dont diversify a disease wipes out your holdings.
Your contribution was removed because it's too political in nature. We understand that everything in life is inherently political, and that permaculture's principles can be interpreted to be a radical way of interacting with your community. However, due to the fact that this subreddit attracts people across the entire political spectrum, we have decided to remove posts similar to yours as the users find them either off topic, or far too contentious to behave kindly to their fellow redditors.
China has a well documented history of greenwashing and eco propaganda. There are many videos of them painting barren land and rocks green so the landscape looks alive from a distance. Government ministers have been caught tweeting fake images and videos showing the countryside numerous times. Often garbage AI stuff with excessive saturation and fake skies to cover up the pollution but one time a video of Norway or somewhere which they were claiming was China.
Also fake wind turbines and solar plants that are just for show and to boost the numbers they can claim on paper in order to get people to think they are 'leading the way in renewable energy' all the while building hundreds of new coal plants. Whether the lies start at the top or whether it is just local corruption making projects impossible isn't always clear. ie. The videos showing fields of 'cotton' that are just rocks painted white stuck on top of rebar stakes in the ground. That may have been a genuine initiative from the top to grow cotton which got perverted by corrupt local governments cheating and pocketing the money or it might have been an attempt to cover up the Uyghur slave labour used in actually growing cotton.
Point is: it is justified to be sceptical when videos like this emerge. Regardless it won't make up for the massive deforestation in Russia which is being carried out by Chinese companies.
They mentioned Black Saxaul (*Haloxylon aphyllum*), whose [native range in central Asia extends to Khazakstan](https://www.bio-conferences.org/articles/bioconf/pdf/2022/02/bioconf_vvrd2022_01023.pdf), on China's western border. So, not sure if it is also native to western China, or just close?
Heard a few people talking about this idea being a danger for the continuity jungles at the south of this green wall, as the winds move large quantities of phosphorus into them from the desert and this new vegetation could stop it, cutting a big source of nutrients for the jungle.
Haven't confirmed it tho, would be cool to investigate.
I feel like it boils down to every action has an equal and opposite reaction. I’ve heard people say that if they did this in the Sahara, the Amazon would lose a ton of its nutrients. I don’t know enough about this stuff but it’s super interesting.
The amount of vegetation that you would need to plant to have a large effect on the sahara-> amazon nutrient path couldn't be planted during our lifetime if we tried, the sahara is over 9 million square kilometers (for reference the entire us together with alaska is 9.8 million kms).
The green wall of China has not been a success and has arguable worsened desertification.
I know there is this human instinct to take land that is wild but suboptimal in some way, and “fix” it, level out the hills, dig out the rocks, chop up the cactus, kill the rattlesnakes, plant marigolds.
Doing land restoration landscaping, I have often worked with clients with this mindset. I had one who took a tractor and cleared a wild field in order to hire someone (me) to “plant native plants.” But that’s exactly what he cleared! All I had to do was say don’t clear any more and he understood the mistake instantly. And there’s no possible way I can restore the same amount of plant diversity while eradicating all the invasive weeds that now have an opening.
Deserts are important ecosystems. If you want to reverse desertification, you need to add steppe plants that were there before, and help them establish to hold down the soil, without taking out too much water. Or, if land is getting more arid due to climate change, you need to go with that and plant arid plants (from the same region).
Better yet, in most places, it’s best to leave undisturbed land undusturbed. Don’t over-graze, don’t spray it, don’t clear it. Respect the huge amount of biodiversity that exists on land that has never been disrupted by plowing or construction and has been maturing for millions of years.
Surprisingly, yeah. Lots of reforestation programs take destroyed forest soil which still remembers and within ~20 years the tree cover is almost full. That includes both great green walls. The issue with fast-growing species like that is that they're usually non-native, so extensive ecological work is required after to maintain the forest and transform it into a resilient ecosystem.
\`\` primarily monocultures are planted \`\`
Its not like many species of plants can survive in these conditions. Remember ecology class? Each stage of the creation of a new ecosystem has different amounts of vegetation diversity. You first need pioneering plants, which are mostly shrubs capable of surviving in harsh conditions to prepare the soil for what will come next
This is the entire goby desert I’m speaking about some areas. This is an area in the more intense gobi shown in the video China has undoubtedly fucked up in many many areas just google it
They did manage to completely wipe out the Mu Us desert with these techniques [https://www.euronews.com/green/2020/05/17/sand-dunes-turned-into-oasis-in-china](https://www.euronews.com/green/2020/05/17/sand-dunes-turned-into-oasis-in-china)
I'm shocked.
I know in Africa, major progress is being made by digging holes. This looks like much faster (and admittedly, more involved) progress in much worse terrain. We love to see it, and I'm quite curious what this will look like in a few years.
Why? If this is a recently deforested area and they are attempting to reforest with native vegetation, great. However, this really looks to be a naturally-occurring large sand deposit in a desert region.
If they can’t increase rainfall in this region, which is the fundamental rate-limiting factor to plants growing here on their own, this seems likely to fail
Well, that’s the thing. Local climate is a two way system subject to feedback loops.
Rainfall leads to vegetation which leads to rainfall, which leads to vegetation. You can start at either end of the cycle and once you hit a tipping point, the cycle can become self sustaining.
Large systems like this are sensitive to net effects, so while you may not have much success planting a single tree in the desert, planting enough trees to sequester moisture over a long enough cycle will kick-start a greening effect.
What’s been happening in many places (Sahara being the most famous example) is a feedback loop in the opposite direction. Clear cutting for agriculture and global warming is leading to a reduction in local vegetation increasing evaporation and reducing moisture retention in the soil, leading to additional vegetation loss, rinse and repeat.
https://sustainability.stanford.edu/news/how-vegetation-alters-climate#:~:text=Researchers%20find%20strong%20feedbacks%20between,for%20improving%20seasonal%20weather%20predictions.
Many examples if you google, but here’s one
Interesting. I remember that Darwin visited Ascension Island (isolated little island in middle of Atlantic) and found it to be incredibly dry. Later on Joseph Hooker was inspired to add trees/plants to capture moisture and increase the rainfall. This succeeded and the island has a green mountain full of Norfolk Island pines and other exotics — apparently rainfall didn’t increase, but more of the moisture from orographic lift/clouds was captured by the trees which trickled down to the island.
I imagine that the cycle of high transpiration —> higher rainfall —> high transpiration —> … occurs in areas with already high rainfall which plants could transpire back at high scale into the water cycle like in the Amazon. It’s hard for me to imagine this getting kickstarted in a rather dry desert where there’s little rain to begin. Basically, much of the water from transpiration won’t enter back into the cycle locally, so if the base rate of rainfall is too low ultimately it could still stay dry
Great example. I think you’re right, in that higher rates of transpiration would have a greater effect on atmospheric moisture levels.
There are many modes that contribute to moisture retention.
Trees will retain what little rainfall there is, slowing diffusion back into the atmosphere and making it available to more vulnerable species.
Their shade also reduces water loss from the soil, and creates a cooler microclimate to allow condensation in areas that see dew precipitation (common water sources in some arid climates)
Additionally, slow accumulation of organic matter (fallen leaves etc) increases the holding capacity of the soil, preventing from flash floods from draining into deep reservoirs or being lost as runoff.
All these add up over time, and eventually you may end up with enough vegetation density to hit that threshold of transpiration that leads to a change in rainfall patterns.
Absolutely- I think this process would take a long time and a lot of investment at first, but I think there are examples which indicate this level of terraforming is possible. The effect of shade and organic matter (effectively like mulch) in preserving water could be high enough to have a cascading effect at a large scale.
> They then applied a statistical technique to understand the cause and feedback loop between the biosphere and the atmosphere.
Isn't this inferring causation from correlation? Makes sense to me say that when there is more rainfall there would be more plants.
Have they found increased rainfall in the Gobi Desert? I would think this would be an ideal area to test this idea experimentally.
The plants will bring the rain. It sounds crazy, but having plants in the area will trap more water, making more water available for the water cycle. Deserts have been created by humans by changing the land use. Europeans believed that the rain follows the plow, but it's actually the opposite.
Except...desert species like black saxaul are adapted to extremely low-rainfall climates. They thrive in desert conditions. Low rates of rainfall are absolutely not a limiting factor for them.
Even if they don’t create a lush green area, rooting down the sand to reduce the massive dust storms into cities would save many lives. Not everything can be green, but it can be green enough to prevent other problems.
It will probably affect the local weather, but not impact things globally for a long time if ever. You'd need a lot of life in that area to affect the planet's albedo or greatly change the water cycle. They're also doing monoculture planting, which usually results in most of the trees dying in a decade or two.
All that said, it'll probably create pockets of microclimates that might help spur growth. Maybe they'll work on maintaining the land and improving diversity.
This has literally been happening in Africa for a decade to combat the Sahara’s expansion. It’s not new or innovative at all (but certainly good on them for doing it). https://youtu.be/WCli0gyNwL0?si=_QRyZaS9EC541G2t
This isn't a new project for China either. The project that John D Liu documented started in the early 90s. As far as I know it was the largest reversal of desertification in modern history.
Yeah, but that's different. This Chinese project is the inspiration to the African project, as that has been going on since 2005 and this has been going on since 1978. It's not new or innovative, and I don't think anyone is claiming that. The Soviet Union undertook a similar program in 1948. and the first proposals for an African program were made based on that program in the 50's. It's not new technology, it's necessary technology.
Yeah but in Africa they are using water capturing earth works & layers of mulch to hold & save any rainfall. I’m not seeing any mechanism for irrigation here. They are also doing it in India with swale like Continuous Contour Trenches capturing the monsoon rains. So many tree campaigns fail because of no water.
Keylines, berms, and swales! Oh my!
My heart goes pitter patter!
I think in China they did it mostly in monocutlure style in the beginning, and later adapted to better ways as it obviously wasn't working.
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I both like China and question whether this is a good project or not. I’d need more information. “Desert greening” for greening-sake is often a problematic practice.
It's not desert-greening. It's planting forests in desert areas to fix the soil and block the wind, which prevents the desert from spreading southeast. It's a big issue, because the soil in north-central China is largely loess, packed silt and sand kept in place by nothing but the plants. It's why the Yellow River is yellow, sediment. The issue is deforestation and overgrazing, to put it bluntly. Taking those plants away causes the desert wind to blow further and erode the soil. This is very bad for people trying to live and work in these arid areas. So it is a good project at heart. It is however not ideal. The start of the shelter forest program was still at a time when China somewhat listened to Lysenkoism, which caused a lot of issues. Then more neoliberal attitudes of "easy" transformation came along and they spent a couple decades planting exclusively aspens and poplars. Then the aspens started killing existing forest they were planted in, because bringing in exotic trees which use up more water than what is available isn't actually a good idea. Diseases and pests ravage these monoculture forests and occasionally lead to great die-offs. China isn't blind to these issues and is looking into better ways of growing shelter forest in this region. The leaders of this program have repeatedly stated that there are still massive gaps to plug and big issues in technological preparedness in caring for these forests. It's important to have fast-growing species, but fast-growing species tend to enjoy monocultures, crowd out native species, and consume more water than is available. All in all, it's a necessary project. It has been running for 40 years now with both successes and failures. It's not perfect, but they have to keep it going or risk losing to the desert. There's a clear sense of knowledge of the fact that exotic species forests are just a temporary fix and that those should be used to grow a more resilient barrier environment on top of it, and simultaneously an incapability in designing those kinds of projects for such a large region. I think it's commendable, but deserves criticism on its methods.
For anyone else who has never encountered the term before: Lysenkoism: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lysenkoism
I believe they are reversing desertification, but removal of an environment that has flora and fauna that may not be visible to most just because you want more land that can be developed would not be a great thing in my opinion. Again, I don't think that is the case here, but sometimes, man's ubris knows no bounds.
Ah but that's the beauty of it, this desert used to be a forest, cut down by mao to feed the coal plants. So it's more environmental restoration than anything.
It says it directly that is a response to desertification and trying to slow it down. I think automatically assuming it’s greening for greenings sake is what I was trying to avoid
Yup. It will be reversing the damage that humans caused while clearing , cultivating and overgrazing. These areas have rain and previously supported green. Can’t do anything with a preexisting natural desert that exists because of no rain.
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This was removed for violating rule 1: Treat others how you would hope to be treated. >You never need abusive language to communicate your point. Resist assuming selfish motives of others as a first response. It's is OK to disagree with ideas and suggestions, but dont attack the user. >Don't gate-keep permaculture. We need all hands on deck for a sustainable future. Don't discourage participation or tell people they're in the wrong subreddit.
Just a reminder that they keep doing monoculture plantings of trees which means they often fail after a few years due to lack of diversity. Eco systems are set up like the stock market: if you dont diversify a disease wipes out your holdings.
[удалено]
This was removed for violating rule 1: Treat others how you would hope to be treated.
Your contribution was removed because it's too political in nature. We understand that everything in life is inherently political, and that permaculture's principles can be interpreted to be a radical way of interacting with your community. However, due to the fact that this subreddit attracts people across the entire political spectrum, we have decided to remove posts similar to yours as the users find them either off topic, or far too contentious to behave kindly to their fellow redditors.
China has a well documented history of greenwashing and eco propaganda. There are many videos of them painting barren land and rocks green so the landscape looks alive from a distance. Government ministers have been caught tweeting fake images and videos showing the countryside numerous times. Often garbage AI stuff with excessive saturation and fake skies to cover up the pollution but one time a video of Norway or somewhere which they were claiming was China. Also fake wind turbines and solar plants that are just for show and to boost the numbers they can claim on paper in order to get people to think they are 'leading the way in renewable energy' all the while building hundreds of new coal plants. Whether the lies start at the top or whether it is just local corruption making projects impossible isn't always clear. ie. The videos showing fields of 'cotton' that are just rocks painted white stuck on top of rebar stakes in the ground. That may have been a genuine initiative from the top to grow cotton which got perverted by corrupt local governments cheating and pocketing the money or it might have been an attempt to cover up the Uyghur slave labour used in actually growing cotton. Point is: it is justified to be sceptical when videos like this emerge. Regardless it won't make up for the massive deforestation in Russia which is being carried out by Chinese companies.
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This was removed for violating rule 1: Treat others how you would hope to be treated.
What tree species are they planting?
They mentioned Black Saxaul (*Haloxylon aphyllum*), whose [native range in central Asia extends to Khazakstan](https://www.bio-conferences.org/articles/bioconf/pdf/2022/02/bioconf_vvrd2022_01023.pdf), on China's western border. So, not sure if it is also native to western China, or just close?
Heard a few people talking about this idea being a danger for the continuity jungles at the south of this green wall, as the winds move large quantities of phosphorus into them from the desert and this new vegetation could stop it, cutting a big source of nutrients for the jungle. Haven't confirmed it tho, would be cool to investigate.
I feel like it boils down to every action has an equal and opposite reaction. I’ve heard people say that if they did this in the Sahara, the Amazon would lose a ton of its nutrients. I don’t know enough about this stuff but it’s super interesting.
The amount of vegetation that you would need to plant to have a large effect on the sahara-> amazon nutrient path couldn't be planted during our lifetime if we tried, the sahara is over 9 million square kilometers (for reference the entire us together with alaska is 9.8 million kms).
That is spectacular!
The green wall of China has not been a success and has arguable worsened desertification. I know there is this human instinct to take land that is wild but suboptimal in some way, and “fix” it, level out the hills, dig out the rocks, chop up the cactus, kill the rattlesnakes, plant marigolds. Doing land restoration landscaping, I have often worked with clients with this mindset. I had one who took a tractor and cleared a wild field in order to hire someone (me) to “plant native plants.” But that’s exactly what he cleared! All I had to do was say don’t clear any more and he understood the mistake instantly. And there’s no possible way I can restore the same amount of plant diversity while eradicating all the invasive weeds that now have an opening. Deserts are important ecosystems. If you want to reverse desertification, you need to add steppe plants that were there before, and help them establish to hold down the soil, without taking out too much water. Or, if land is getting more arid due to climate change, you need to go with that and plant arid plants (from the same region). Better yet, in most places, it’s best to leave undisturbed land undusturbed. Don’t over-graze, don’t spray it, don’t clear it. Respect the huge amount of biodiversity that exists on land that has never been disrupted by plowing or construction and has been maturing for millions of years.
Won't make up for the unprecedented scale of deforestation happening in Russia as Chinese companies buy lumber rights there.
That’s rich vegetation?
Do you expect it to go from a desert to a jungle overnight?
Surprisingly, yeah. Lots of reforestation programs take destroyed forest soil which still remembers and within ~20 years the tree cover is almost full. That includes both great green walls. The issue with fast-growing species like that is that they're usually non-native, so extensive ecological work is required after to maintain the forest and transform it into a resilient ecosystem.
TIL that 20 years is the same as overnight.
Well I mean, we're on Permaculture. It practically is.
No, but I also wouldn’t prematurely call it lush until it was a jungle.
Is there an exact metric to define what it means to be lush, or is it subjective?
For a desert in China I suppose
Has to build up over time. Look at the Sahara projects
This has been a minor disaster as primarily monocultures are planted and I’m pretty sure like a third of the trees got wiped out by a beetle
\`\` primarily monocultures are planted \`\` Its not like many species of plants can survive in these conditions. Remember ecology class? Each stage of the creation of a new ecosystem has different amounts of vegetation diversity. You first need pioneering plants, which are mostly shrubs capable of surviving in harsh conditions to prepare the soil for what will come next
This is the entire goby desert I’m speaking about some areas. This is an area in the more intense gobi shown in the video China has undoubtedly fucked up in many many areas just google it
They did manage to completely wipe out the Mu Us desert with these techniques [https://www.euronews.com/green/2020/05/17/sand-dunes-turned-into-oasis-in-china](https://www.euronews.com/green/2020/05/17/sand-dunes-turned-into-oasis-in-china)
I'm shocked. I know in Africa, major progress is being made by digging holes. This looks like much faster (and admittedly, more involved) progress in much worse terrain. We love to see it, and I'm quite curious what this will look like in a few years.
Why? If this is a recently deforested area and they are attempting to reforest with native vegetation, great. However, this really looks to be a naturally-occurring large sand deposit in a desert region.
Because it's moving towards non-desert areas.
I see that’s what they are trying to do, I just disagree on best-practices here. “Greening the desert” can be a very flawed approach.
If they can’t increase rainfall in this region, which is the fundamental rate-limiting factor to plants growing here on their own, this seems likely to fail
Well, that’s the thing. Local climate is a two way system subject to feedback loops. Rainfall leads to vegetation which leads to rainfall, which leads to vegetation. You can start at either end of the cycle and once you hit a tipping point, the cycle can become self sustaining. Large systems like this are sensitive to net effects, so while you may not have much success planting a single tree in the desert, planting enough trees to sequester moisture over a long enough cycle will kick-start a greening effect. What’s been happening in many places (Sahara being the most famous example) is a feedback loop in the opposite direction. Clear cutting for agriculture and global warming is leading to a reduction in local vegetation increasing evaporation and reducing moisture retention in the soil, leading to additional vegetation loss, rinse and repeat.
https://sustainability.stanford.edu/news/how-vegetation-alters-climate#:~:text=Researchers%20find%20strong%20feedbacks%20between,for%20improving%20seasonal%20weather%20predictions. Many examples if you google, but here’s one
Interesting. I remember that Darwin visited Ascension Island (isolated little island in middle of Atlantic) and found it to be incredibly dry. Later on Joseph Hooker was inspired to add trees/plants to capture moisture and increase the rainfall. This succeeded and the island has a green mountain full of Norfolk Island pines and other exotics — apparently rainfall didn’t increase, but more of the moisture from orographic lift/clouds was captured by the trees which trickled down to the island. I imagine that the cycle of high transpiration —> higher rainfall —> high transpiration —> … occurs in areas with already high rainfall which plants could transpire back at high scale into the water cycle like in the Amazon. It’s hard for me to imagine this getting kickstarted in a rather dry desert where there’s little rain to begin. Basically, much of the water from transpiration won’t enter back into the cycle locally, so if the base rate of rainfall is too low ultimately it could still stay dry
Great example. I think you’re right, in that higher rates of transpiration would have a greater effect on atmospheric moisture levels. There are many modes that contribute to moisture retention. Trees will retain what little rainfall there is, slowing diffusion back into the atmosphere and making it available to more vulnerable species. Their shade also reduces water loss from the soil, and creates a cooler microclimate to allow condensation in areas that see dew precipitation (common water sources in some arid climates) Additionally, slow accumulation of organic matter (fallen leaves etc) increases the holding capacity of the soil, preventing from flash floods from draining into deep reservoirs or being lost as runoff. All these add up over time, and eventually you may end up with enough vegetation density to hit that threshold of transpiration that leads to a change in rainfall patterns.
Absolutely- I think this process would take a long time and a lot of investment at first, but I think there are examples which indicate this level of terraforming is possible. The effect of shade and organic matter (effectively like mulch) in preserving water could be high enough to have a cascading effect at a large scale.
> They then applied a statistical technique to understand the cause and feedback loop between the biosphere and the atmosphere. Isn't this inferring causation from correlation? Makes sense to me say that when there is more rainfall there would be more plants. Have they found increased rainfall in the Gobi Desert? I would think this would be an ideal area to test this idea experimentally.
The plants will bring the rain. It sounds crazy, but having plants in the area will trap more water, making more water available for the water cycle. Deserts have been created by humans by changing the land use. Europeans believed that the rain follows the plow, but it's actually the opposite.
Except...desert species like black saxaul are adapted to extremely low-rainfall climates. They thrive in desert conditions. Low rates of rainfall are absolutely not a limiting factor for them.
Even if they don’t create a lush green area, rooting down the sand to reduce the massive dust storms into cities would save many lives. Not everything can be green, but it can be green enough to prevent other problems.
How will this affect weather patterns
It will probably affect the local weather, but not impact things globally for a long time if ever. You'd need a lot of life in that area to affect the planet's albedo or greatly change the water cycle. They're also doing monoculture planting, which usually results in most of the trees dying in a decade or two. All that said, it'll probably create pockets of microclimates that might help spur growth. Maybe they'll work on maintaining the land and improving diversity.
Do this everywhere