A new lake has formed in the desert of United Arabs and now, new ecology has begun forming. Dave Clark, a hydrologist with the U.S. Geological Survey working in the United Arab Emirates, said this lake emerged from the sand a few years ago.
"You see local families out here and they're all just enthralled," Clark said. "It's water in the desert, so everybody's pleased. But it's definitely water that's had a human touch to it. People have had their hand in this water, maybe literally.
"It goes to the sewage treatment plant, and they treat it, and they bring it back into town. And they water the parks and the gardens and things like that, and that percolates down into the groundwater," he said.
"Just because the sand dunes look on the surface to be fairly barren doesn't mean that they are. They are full of life," said Brigitte Howarth, an ecologist at Zayed University in Dubai. "All of a sudden, this fly started to dip its abdomen into the sand. And so, it's about an inch deep in the sand, and it's egg-laying.".
According to a report from the University, "The midas flies rely on dry, loose sand to lay their eggs. But the lake is flooding more and more of the sand. Howarth hadn't yet spotted any midas flies this year, and she's concerned about the lake's effect on their habitat."
"For them, the encroachment is in fact a death sentence," Howarth said. "With every species that we lose, it's like rolling the dice. The whole ecosystem could crash down."
But Clark, with the U.S. Geological Survey, said he's not so worried about the desert ecosystem. He said the lake is tiny compared to the vast amount of desert in this part of the world.
"If I look through the binoculars, there's, like, seven different kinds of herons," Clark said. "There's greater cormorants. There's ferruginous ducks, which are another very rare worldwide species. There's about 15 of them out here.
"Every year, we find two or three or four or five birds that have never been seen before in the UAE. So it's one of the few places in the world that the number of birds is actually increasing, instead of decreasing," he said.
