Stages
As the desertification takes place, the landscape progresses through different stages and continuously transforms in appearance. The desertification generally creates increasingly larger empty spaces over a large strip of land, a phenomenon known as "tiger fur pattern". A mathematical model has been made of it by Sjors van der Stelt. Besides explaining the process of desertification, the model is also useful for developing methods to combat it (see also: Alternative stable state).
Read more about this topic: Desertification
Famous quotes containing the word stages:
“America is a country that seems forever to be toddler or teenager, at those two stages of human development characterized by conflict between autonomy and security.”
—Anna Quindlen (b. 1952)
“Phlebas the Phoenician, a fortnight dead,
Forgot the cry of gulls, and the deep sea swell
And the profit and loss.
A current under sea
Picked his bones in whispers. As he rose and fell
He passed the stages of his age and youth
Entering the whirlpool.”
—T.S. (Thomas Stearns)
“The playing adult steps sideward into another reality; the playing child advances forward to new stages of mastery....Child’s play is the infantile form of the human ability to deal with experience by creating model situations and to master reality by experiment and planning.”
—Erik H. Erikson (20th century)