The combination of the incipient demise of cheap oil and increasing evidence of global warming due to anthropogenic fossil carbon release has reinvigorated the need for and efforts toward renewable energy sources, especially for transportation applications. Biomass/biodiesel appears to have many benefits compared to hydrogen, the only other major renewable transportation fuel candidate. Biomass production is currently limited by available arable land and fresh water. Halophyte plants and direct seawater/saline water irrigation proffer a wholly different biomass production mantra―using wastelands and very plentiful seawater. Such an approach addresses many to most of the major emerging societal problems, including land, water, food, global warming, and energy. For many reasons, including seawater agriculture, portions of the Sahara appear to be viable candidates for future biomass production. The apparent nonlinearity between vegetation cover and atmospheric conditions over North Africa necessitates serious coupled boundary layer meteorology and global circulation modeling to ensure that this form of terra forming is favorable and to avoid adverse unintended consequences.

Introduction

Beginning with the technological development of fire in the human hunter–gatherer period, biomass was, until the 1800s, the dominant energy source. The subsequent development and utilization of fossil fuels, including coal, oil, and natural gas, powered/enabled tremendous technological progress and major increases in societal population and wealth.