I’m just curious, in a broad sense, how one would go about restoring the land, if one doesn’t use magic.
Like, example (A), a patch of defiled ground. I imagine it would be like (without any humor intended) how, in the Martian, Matt Damon turned the Martian dust into adequate soil (fertilizer, plus I’d include mixing in the healthy soil surrounding it to introduce the needed microfauna and flora). Then use earthworms (or equivalent) to stir up the soil.
You’d probably have to dig out all the defiled soil, to whatever depth necessary, and after treatment, replace it and put in some starter plants.
Or example (B), a valley against a mountain; not defiled, but nowhere near its Green Age best. (Long term plan is to eventually revive a dead river.) Start with (not a scientist) moss which can still survive in the cracks. Something that would retain the dew that falls in the morning.
And so on. Anyway, that’s how I kind of imagine it.
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I think it’s pretty much exactly that first one. Working compost into the soil is mentioned in Wanderer’s Journal as something preservers do to counter the effects of magic on the land. In Rise and Fall of a Dragon King, Hamanu talks about having defiled soil scraped away and new soil brought in from the Kreegill Mountains.
There seems to be multiple stages of defiling damage. Plants turning to ash is the immediate visible effect, but what really matters in the long term is that the soil’s vitality (presumably soil microbiota, nutrients, etc.) is destroyed. Absolutely nothing will grow for a year, but even after that, the soil is depleted for centuries or indefinitely.
But that very long depletion may partly be because the deserts of Athas aren’t the kind of environment that would produce new soil at any kind of reasonable rate. If you cover the land with compost or manure, you can improve that a lot.
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Yeah, this.
I think a defiled patch of ground in the Forest Ridge would - given the same amount of “tending” - be restored much more quickly than, say, a patch in the Great Alluvial Sand Wastes. It partially has to depend on how absolutely TEEMING with life and biotic materials a place is, IMO.
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