The Great Wall of China covers a vast area across east Asia, stretching some 13,171 miles. It has taken serious efforts by preservationists to maintain the ancient, more than 2 millenia-old structure. However, now experts say there are other, organic preservationists at work, natural biocrusts that could be preventing many less monitored sections from crumbling.
Category
📚
LearningTranscript
00:00The Great Wall of China covers a vast area across East Asia, stretching some 13,171 miles.
00:11It has taken serious efforts by preservationists to maintain the ancient, more than two millennia-old structure.
00:16But now experts say there are other organic preservationists at work,
00:20natural bio-crusts that could be preventing many less monitored sections from crumbling.
00:25Researchers looked at a 400-mile section of the wall which straddles some of the driest areas of its expanse.
00:30They found a bio-crust of cyanobacteria, moss, and lichen, or a fungus-algae composite organism, covering the ancient structure.
00:38They then looked underneath these living creatures, finding that while on the outside they may have looked considerably more lost to time than the human-preserved sections of the wall,
00:46beneath the bio-crust the wall was actually better preserved, less porous than other sections.
00:51With the researchers noting that while the bio-crust may have dug in somewhat to the bricking, it actually bound it together,
00:56with the binding outweighing any damage it did in the process, all while protecting it from wind and rain at the same time.
01:02With the researchers writing, quote,
01:04the protective function of bio-crusts produced by their reduction of erodibility is much greater than the potential bio-deterioration caused by their biological weathering.
01:13adamentecoring
01:14...
01:19...
01:20...
01:21...
01:23...
01:27...
01:29...
01:31...
01:32...
01:33...
01:35...