The transforming Effect of Water on Plants in the Desert
Source: Unser Wasser - Faszinierende Wunderwelten (1/3) - Full Documentarty: https://www.arte.tv/de/videos/095157-...
The three-part documentary series looks at human history through the lens of man's relationship with water. Indeed, the human race owes its success to a great extent to its control over the blue gold. But as civilisation expanded, mankind became tremendously dependent on this precious resource, which today threatens to run dry.
Water - a tiny molecule - allows animals and humans to live, trees to grow towards the sky and deserts to blossom again. The first part of the documentary series, "Gift of Nature", looks at the fundamental importance of water for every form of life - and shows that the existence of the resource is not at all a matter of course. While the origins of water and life are being explored in Iceland, the consequences of increasing water shortages are being felt in other regions of the world. Droughts, fires and the destruction of rainforests are irreversibly damaging parts of the biosphere. In the forest regions of the Amazon, where water drops slowly flow through the trees and evaporate at high altitudes - until they finally find themselves in flying rivers - the threat is particularly visible. But in some areas there is also hope: a time-lapse image sequence from a dozen years, for example, shows how quickly a desert blossoms after just a few drops of water have fallen. And it is not only vegetation that depends on water: The vital molecule directs entire migratory movements of animals - whether herds moving through the desert or dragonflies crossing entire oceans. Satellite maps illustrate these large migrations as a function of water supplies. But not everywhere will the global organism continue in this way: The Earth is now undergoing diverse, highly consequential processes of change; and new fields of research for science are emerging from the drying up of water sources.