The Rock Round Palace, a unique feature of Ksar Drâa in Algeria, is not only an architectural marvel but also a symbol of the diverse communities that once lived in this desert oasis. Built from locally sourced materials like adobe and stone, the palace reflects the traditional vernacular architecture of the region, blending harmoniously with the harsh Saharan landscape.

For much of the 19th and early 20th centuries, the ksar, including the Rock Round Palace, was home to a significant Jewish community.

Jews, alongside Berber and Arab families, lived in this fortified village, contributing to local trade and crafts. The Jewish presence in the ksar was an important part of the region’s cultural and social life.

However, after Algeria’s independence from France in 1962, the situation for Jews in the country changed dramatically. The new government, led by the FLN (National Liberation Front), sought to build a unified national identity, often at the expense of minority groups, including Jews.

The Jewish community, seen as linked to the French colonial period, became targets of violence and hostility. Attacks on Jewish homes and businesses, threats, and the desecration of synagogues and cemeteries forced many to flee to other countries.

This violent shift in the social and political landscape pushed many Jews to emigrate.

A significant number of Algerian Jews moved to France, where there was already a large Algerian Jewish community, while others moved to Israel, joining the broader migration of North African Jews who faced persecution in their homes.

The persecution, combined with the fear of further violence, led to the gradual abandonment of Ksar Drâa and other similar ksars.

Today, the Rock Round Palace stands as a historical site, a reminder of the diverse cultural heritage that once thrived in the region. Videos circulating on Youtube suggest that anyone off the street can wander inside and around the citadel suggesting it’s not being protected well for future generations.

The remnants of Jewish life, visible in old houses and synagogues, add to the richness of its story and highlight the multicultural history of Ksar Drâa. Let’s hope that one day people of all religions will find safety in any place they call home.

Love vernacular architecture? Read our review of Habitat, the bible of vernacular architecture.

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The toughest foot race on Earth kicks off on April 6^th.   It’s a gruelling multi-stage adventure through formidable landscape in one of the world’s most inhospitable climates – the Sahara desert in southern Morocco. The annual Marathon des Sables, better known as MdS, is now in its 30th consecutive year. Ready to lace up?

The race attracts about 1,300 international participants who will spend six days crossing about 240 km of difficult desert terrain (nearly equal to six regular marathons). Modestly billed as a “foot race”, the ultra-marathon is open to runners and walkers, to individuals and teams, and to amateur and elite runners. MdS grows in popularity every year, and getting a place in the race isn’t easy: subscriptions to the 2016 race are already fully booked – racers pre-register years in advance.

The rules require you to be completely self-sufficient from breakfast time on April 6 until lunch on April 12.  The organizers provide water refills and tents for nighttime sleeping, but racers must carry all other personal supplies and equipment in backpacks as they trek.

This includes food, an intimidating prospect since participants must pack enough chow to replace 3,000-4,000 calories per day and food choices must withstand daytime temperatures that hover at 100°F.  It’s all about weight balancing so your groceries don’t hinder your movement across changeable terrain, and easy prep (want to cook? you’ll have to carry fuel, matches, stoves). This race is as much about project management as it is about physical endurance. Survivors must manage strength, food and water needs for a week.

It began in 1984 when a French concert promoter set out for an epic walk across the Sahara desert, with a goal of covering 300 km carrying everything he would need on his back. Patrick Bauer survived and, transformed by his experience, decided to organize an event that would replicate it for others.  After two years of logistics and fundraising, he launched the first ‘Marathon of the Sands’ in 1986, attracting 186 competitors. The event has matured over 30 years; the King of Morocco His Highness Mohammed VI now opens the race for the thousands of racers, organizers and media that descend on his kingdom.

Conducting a race of this enormity in a spectacular (and spectacularly inhospitable) part of the world puts environment at the forefront for both racers and organizers. MdS also has a socially responsible aspect. 

MdS founder Bauer and his wife Marie set up the Solidarite foundation in Ouazarzate (south Morocco) to support to encourage sports development and education. They teach women to read and write and how to adopt best practice with regards to hygiene and healthcare.  Children take part in sports camps, including excursions to the seaside where they learn to swim and sail. All money raised goes directly to the cause, nothing is used for fundraising, admin or marketing. (The Solidarite website details their projects.)

Villages along the path of the race are also supported with donations of books and agricultural tools, and projects to develop water wells and water purification systems.

Over the course of the event, racers consume over 120,000 liters of drinking water, distributed in bottles each marked with the racers’ official competition number. It’s forbidden to dump empty bottles (or their caps) along the race route. Litterers are tracked and penalized on race points. To make sure that no rubbish is left at overnight camps or along the race course, a sweep-up crew follows race progress. Other than foot tracks, it is impossible to see where camps set up.

A slot in the race doesn’t come cheap. Entry costs for this year’s race was over $5,500 for each entrant and almost $5,800 for team entrants.  A amount of spaces are earmarked for charity organizations, including Solidarite, which racers can apply for in return for specified minimums of fundraising.

Peak your interest? Don’t let the years-in-advance booking fool you. You’ll need to start training and preparing your body with the right diet six to twelve months before the race.

Images from Sultan Marathon des Sables Morocco’s Facebook page

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Posterity may end up migrating from place to place to find food like our nomadic ancestors did if we don’t get a hold of desertification and climate change. To make that easier for desert dwellers, Stephane Malka and Yachar Bouhaya propose the Green Machine – a massive city on tank treads that fertilizes the Sahara as it moves. 

Originally entered into a competition as the Morrocan pavilion for the 2014 Venice Architecture Biennale and selected for the Jury special prize, The Green Machine rethinks our future survival in the desert – albeit in a wild and wacky way.

A self-sufficient roaming city on caterpillar treads, the large and unsightly machine city plows the desert sands as it progresses through the dunes and rocks.

It then injects fertilizer, plants seeds and drops water – all in an effort to turn the desert from a veritable wasteland into something that can eventually produce food.

Related: Qatar’s Sahara Forest Desert Forest Project grows cucumbers from saltwater

Equipped with nine large balloons that collect water through condensation and store it – in part for irrigation and in part to sustain people living on the machine, and large solar towers that capture the sun’s energy, the city addresses the multi pronged issues of overpopulation, food scarcity, and water shortages.

There are of course some drawbacks to the design: for example, who will tend the lands plowed and planted after the city moves on to another section of the desert?

Albeit rather fantastical, we think The Green Machine offers exactly the kind of alternate thinking we need to be doing to prepare ourselves for the dramatic changes that our planet is undergoing. The status quo certainly won’t get us anywhere.

:: Yachar Bouhaya, Stephane Malka

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With its oversized ears and soft brown eyes, the world’s smallest canid is also probably the cutest. But being adorable has turned out to be lethal for the Fennec Fox in Tunisia, where both locals and tourists are loving the species to death. 

Life is rough for desert dwellers in North Africa, where the sun beats down on the sand year round, and water and food are scarce. But the Fennec Fox has developed numerous traits over the years that have allowed its populations to flourish throughout the Sahara and on towards Sinai.

Relatively little is known about the nocturnal Fennec’s biology, except that its disproportionately large ears not only allow it to root out food, but also help to regulate body temperature. It also burrows itself in the sand – either to escape from predators or to hide from the Saharan sun.

While the International Union for the Conservation of Nature (IUCN) lists Vulpes zerda as of least concern on their red list of threatened species, photographer Bruno D’Amicis discovered a disturbing trend that threatens the species during the two years he spent photographing the animal in Tunisia with support from National Geographic.

He found that nomadic people frequently capture the fox both as pets and to make a few dinar off tourists. D’Amicis won first prize for a single photograph in the Nature category of the 2014 World Press photography competition for an image of a captive Fennec he discovered that was kept as a pet for a small child.

The image depicts a petrified animal chained to a wheel rim in a sheep pen that appears to be absolutely petrified. Thanks to his efforts, the owners eventually freed the animal, but it is unlikely to have survived.

In the comment section of a blog post that National Geographic published about his work, D’Amicis laments the Fennec’s plight but urges readers to think about the problem’s roots.

Related: Tunisia’s environmental progress slides back 25 years

“The story of this unlucky fox is unfortunately just one among many that suffer from the same conditions, and so many other species are facing a similar situation!” he wrote. “One could surely release all of them, a few perhaps will survive, but the main problem will remain: what should be really done is addressing the primary cause.”

The primary cause, according to him, is lack of education and financial security. In 2009, Maureen McKamey, then a Drake University student, relayed a similar story that suggests that D’Amicis may be right.

She tells the story of a nomadic woman who appeared from behind a dune dragging a small Fennec attached to a chain. The old woman asked Maureen and her team if they would like to photograph the fox for a single dinar. Of course the tourists were mortified, and debated buying the Fennec so that they could release it back into the wild, but the guide cautioned against it, since that is exactly what the old woman was hoping would happen.

D’Amicis says that he refused to pay to photograph the captive fox he photographed and urges other travelers to the region to do the same.

Long aware of the problem, the Tunisian government aired a television program that appealed to the population’s sympathy for the small desert creature. The star was Labib the Fennec Fox. Sadly, they eventually declared the program a failure.

:: Proof, National Geographic

Desert fox in desert, Fennec Fox sleeping / Shutterstock

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The curving clays and sand soils of Iran’s salt desert,  Dasht-e Kavir, can be seen in this shot (above) from the Ikonos-2 satellite. According to the ESA, satellites can directly identify different minerals and recognize large-scale geological structures related to mineral deposits that are undetectable by ground-based surveys. Iran is one of the world’s most important mineral producers.

The Sahara Desert comprises most of Libya, leaving only 6% of its land suitable for agriculture. Libya has no permanent rivers or natural inland water bodie. For fresh water, the country relies upon its vast fossil aquifers which formed 10,000 years ago in a very different climate when ancient rivers and lakes were regularly replenished with heavy rains. Water saturated subsurface sandstone, penetrating as deep as 4 km, forming the enormous underground water basins that now supply Libya’s water.

The Al Jawf oasis (pictured above) in southeastern Libya lies deep in the Sahara. The city appears in the upper left corner, and the Braille-like dots are irrigated agricultural plots often a kilometer-wide.  Their circular shapes result from central-pivot irrigation systems, where a long water pipe rotates around a well at the center of each farm. The area receives almost no rainfall, and relies solely on fossil water pumped from deep underground.

Japan’s Advanced Land Observing Satellite (ALOS) captured this image with its Advanced Visible and Near Infrared Radiometer type-2, which charts land cover and vegetation in the visible and near-infrared spectral bands at a resolution of 10 m.

This image from the Ikonos-2 satellite shows the sandy and rocky terrain of the Sahara desert in western Algeria, Africa’s largest country. Major oil and natural gas deposits lie beneath the desert, which comprises 90% of the nation’s landmass, underpinning Algeria’s position as one of Africa’s wealthiest countries.

The closest town to the area pictured above is Taghit in the province of Béchar. The town’s economy is built on tourism, with travelers drawn to the area’s large sand dunes – the main feature of the Sahara’s Grand Erg Occidental, a enormous sea of rolling sand formations.

Taghit National Park was established in 2007 to curb advancing desertification and protect wildlife. The project seeks to guard grasslands, restore palm groves, and reforest degraded land. The region receives less than 25 cm of rainfall per year.

This image was acquired at a spatial resolution of 4 m by the commercial Ikonos-2 satellite.

Check out the ESA archives for more stunning photography, but be warned, it’s addictive.

All images from the European Space Agency

The post Middle East Deserts as Seen From Space: Far-Out Photos! appeared first on Green Prophet.

In 1989, a McDonnell Douglas DC-10 carrying 155 passengers and 15 crew members exploded over the Sahara Desert. 18 years later, family members built a memorial shaped like a plane in Niger, to which Libya contributed $170 million.UTA Flight 772 was flying from Brazzaville in the People’s Republic of Congo, via N’Djamena in Chad, to Paris CDG airport in France.

Many of the passengers on board were VIP dignitaries, including Bonnie Pugh, wife of the American ambassador to Chad at the time, Robert L. Pugh, and the Chadian Planning Minister Mahamat Soumahila.

Just 46 minutes after leaving N’Djamena International Airport, the plane exploded near Bilma and Ténéré. Nobody survived.

The International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO) launched an investigation and subsequently discovered that Libyan terrorists had planted a suitcase bomb in the plane’s forward cargo.

Six men were tried and convicted in absentia by a French court.

Libya is said to have ordered the bombing to take revenge against the French for supporting Chad against the expansionist projects of Libya toward Chad. Gaddafi had grandiose visions of dominating all of Africa, and blamed both the U.S. and France for thwarting those ambitions.

The court in Paris awarded families of the victims varying sums of money, but a collective of relatives went on to form Les Familles du DC10 d’UTA, which signed an agreement on 9 January 2004 with the Gaddafi International Foundation for Charity Associations to receive $170 million or one million dollars for each victim.

Using most these funds, paid out by 2007, the family members worked with locals to build a memorial on the crash site in May and June that year.

Parts of the wreckage were still buried under the sand, including the DC-10’s right wing, which was mounted on the memorial’s northern point.

170 broken mirrors, each one representing one passenger, line the memorial’s circumference, and a plaque with each of the victims’ names was affixed to the upright wing.

Hundreds of dark rocks were trucked in from up to 70 miles away and laid out in the shape of a DC-10 inside a compass. The memorial is visible on Google Maps.

Although the plane crash marks a dark moment in history, this heartwarming memorial to the victims restores our faith in humanity.

For more information and photographs, visit Viral Nova, from where this post was adapted.

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Severed goat heads, bloody and besieged by flies, lay side-by-side on a butcher’s slab. A dozen lethal serpents, coiled and poised to strike, wove back and forth before a snake charmer in the Marrakech souk.

The Fez Medina tempted me with shop after shop of exotic merchandise until I was hopelessly lost within its maze of serpentine, narrow lanes.

An afternoon Sahara sandstorm pelted my bare legs with razor sharp grains of sands as I struggled to stay on a galumping camel, but by morning the exquisite dunes stretched like coral colored waves against a luminous blue sky.

Through it all ran the common thread of music: the rhythmic hand clapping of Dakka Marrakchia musicians in Marrakech; bejeweled Berber women ululating impossibly high notes as men in flowing white caftans beat panel drums around a campfire; and in the desert, hours-long chanting of Gnaoua spiritual songs dedicated to prayer and healing.

These are just some the images and experiences of Morocco that will forever be engraved on my mind.

Fascination, however, commanded an emotional toll. Guides shepherded me to shops guaranteed to offer the best prices and quality when, in truth, it was more about which merchant would pay a higher commission.

Organization was virtually non-existent; nothing ran on time or according to schedule. And everywhere, everyone had a hand out for a tip, right down to the drunk at the gate of the Jewish cemetery in Fez, who accosted visitors unwilling to make a “donation” with his foul liquor-breath.

Exhausted and exasperated, I was relieved when it was time to depart, but three months later it was the arresting sights and trance-like music of this storied land that I remembered most.

In the end, the price of frustration was little enough to pay for the privilege of being fascinated.

In late 2006, Barbara Weibel left a corporate career to pursue her true passions of travel, photography, and writing. She has visited 48 countries and her work has been featured in Huffington Post, Travel + Escape, Lonely Planet, and the new analogy “65 Things to do When You Retire/Travel.” Read about her adventures at Hole in the Donut Cultural Travel or follow her in real-time on her Facebook Page or on Google+.

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Just weeks after launching the world’s largest Concentrated Solar Plant (CSP) in their own backyard, just outside of Abu Dhabi, Masdar announces the official opening of their most recent foreign renewable energy plant. The $31.99 million, 15MW photovoltaic plant accounts for 10 percent of Mauritania’s existing energy capacity and has the potential to offset 21,225 tons of heat-trapping carbon dioxide every year.

Masdar’s green pastures

Promoting energy self-sufficiency abroad comprises a crucial component of Masdar’s grand plan.

The government-backed company is already building a wind farm in the Seychelles, owns part of the world’s largest wind farm in England, the London Array, and recently confirmed plans to take solar energy to Tonga.

Masdar is also a partial owner of the first solar plant in the world that can produce energy 24 hours a day and seven days a week – the 19.9MW Gemasolar CSP plant in Spain, and that doesn’t even begin to shed light on the numerous green schemes they are cooking up back home.

But arguably none will have as dramatic an impact as this relatively small solar farm in Mauritania.

One PV plant = 10% of the country’s capacity

Currently, the country gets most of its energy from diesel generators. In addition to being loud, dirty, environmentally appalling, and unsightly, generators are expensive to run and vulnerable to vacillating fuel prices.

The new Sheikh Zayed Solar Power Plant in the capital Nouakchott will take Mauritania one step further away from this kind of polluting energy supply with enough renewable energy to power 10,000 homes.

And all 29,826 of the plant’s micromorph thin-film panels are placed in mounts that were driven directly into the ground, instead of a concrete platform, in a unique effort to reduce the project’s overall carbon footprint.

“Energy access is a pathway to economic and social opportunity,” said Mauritania President Mohamed Ould Abdel Aziz during the inauguration of the solar plant. “Electrification, through sustainable sources of energy, is critical in ensuring our people have access to basic services and is a step toward improving our infrastructure and long-term economic development.”

Future potential

Mauritania has diamonds, gold and some oil, in addition to a few other natural resources, but their potential for solar and wind energy is likely to draw the most attention in coming decades. Their wind energy potential alone is four times greater than the entire country’s current demand, which is expected to rise by 12 percent a year, according to Masdar.

“Renewable energy has the potential to be a major contributor to the energy mix in developing countries where access to conventional energy is limited,” said Dr. Sultan Ahmed Al Jaber, CEO of Masdar.

“With energy demand expected to nearly double by 2030, renewable energy will play an increasingly important role, especially in countries where demand is rapidly outstripping supply.”

The big projects are exciting, and Masdar has enough of those under its umbrella, but these small plants are essential too. Like the tortoise that wins the race in western folklore, 10 megawatts here and 15 megawatts there add up by slowly chipping away at our dependence on fossil fuels.

Images by Clement Tardif

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The largest simulated space mission stemming from Europe, Mars2013 took place near Erfoud in the northern Sahara throughout February this year. During that time, scientists experimented with a simulated spacesuit called Aouda.X, a temporary emergency shelter, some rovers, and a slew of communication technologies, in addition to exploring other issues that might come up on a real Mars mission.

The Northern Sahara desert’s geology and topography sufficiently resembles that of Mars, according to Gizmag, that the OEWF could get a realistic sense of how both the astronauts and their tools would perform on the fourth planet from the sun – at least a 150 day journey to its closest point using existing technology.

Tests examined issues related to “engineering, planetary surface operations, astrobiology, geophysics, geology, life sciences and other fields,” according to Gizmag.

Albeit considerably lighter (and cheaper) than a genuine spacesuit, the Aouda.X helped astronauts understand how they would manage wearing a cumbersome, heavy (99lb) suit that restricts movement and puts stress on joints and fingers.

Mars2013 also tested a temporary emergency shelter designed by Vienna University of Technology students, which offers 48 hour protection in the event of a suit failure.

OEWF tested three rovers during their simulated mars mission, including the Cliff Reconnaissance Vehicle (CRV) or Cliffbot, the Magma White rover and “Puli” – an unmanned rover with whegs that optimize its mobility.

Establishing some kind of communication link between the base station and astronaut crew is essential to any interplanetary mission, and also deeply challenging.

Gizmag reports:

The purpose isn’t just to maintain a link with mission control, but also to use the new technology to better manage multiple data and communication links between astronauts, machines and base.

More than just an Austrian mission, Mars2013 was made possible by input from 23 nations, including University College London, NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory and the University of Budapest.

For a more detailed analysis of the Mars2013 mission, please head over to Gizmag, from where this post is adapted.

All images via Katja Zanella-Kux from OeWF

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What’s more, he and the rest of his team have introduced the technology to Sahara nomads, who frequently struggle to find water that isn’t inundated with salt. Called the Waterpod, the wooden box was recently demonstrated to a captive audience at the Nomadic Festival in M’Hamid El Ghizlane in southern Morocco.

Made with wood, cork, stainless steel and glass, Thibault’s Waterpod uses the sun’s power to promote evaporation and condensation – a small scale desalination instrument that was first developed by Arabs in the 16th century, according to Physorg.

This is an exciting device for the Sahara nomads, who frequently draw undrinkable brackish water from wells  – a situation exacerbated by a hydroelectric dam built 40 years ago in the Draa Valley to accommodate a growing population and Ourzazate tourists, according to the paper.

Albeit sufficiently lightweight for the nomadic people to carry with them, the $650 price tag is prohibitively high, so the inventors are teaching students at a college in Tiznit how to reproduce the technology at a lower cost.

If cared for properly, the letterbox Waterpod will convert 12 liters of brackish water into 6 liters of clean drinking water every day for up to 40 years.

Nourreddine Bourgab, who is President of the Nomad festival, told AFP that the Waterpod is an exemplary solution to the nomad’s dilemma of hitting salty wells. “It’s a technique that embodies the real meaning of sustainable development and protection of the environment,” he said.

While this isn’t the first time we have showcased simple water purification devices that would benefit just about anyone in our water-scarce region, the Waterpod does seem uniquely designed as a virtually indestructible tool that fits the lifestyle of Sahara nomads.

:: Physorg

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