The Laser Institute for Postgraduate Studies and the Photonics Unit, in cooperation with the National Security Advisory, the Department of Energy, Water and Environment at Al-Nahrain Center for Strategic Studies, has held a workshop within the curriculum of the workshops approved by the presidency of the University of Baghdad entitled “Desertification, drought and dust storms in Iraq”. The workshop included three lectures delivered by specialized professors, where the first one was entitled (Iraq and the challenges of drought and desertification) delivered by the Advisor to the Speaker of the House of Representatives, Prof. Dr. Turhan Muzaffar al-Mufti, in which he defined the Iraqi rain line, as well as the types of storms and the damage caused by these factors on health, agriculture, soil, tourism and population demographics.
The second lecture was entitled (Dust storms in Iraq, their sources, causes and resulting effects) delivered by the Director of the National Center for Population and Demographic Studies at the University of Baghdad, Dr. Nasr Shamil Salman, stressing on the idea that the dust storm varies in intensity, altitude, distances traveled, and it has the ability to carry large amounts of dust, also dust varies in color and density, depending on the region from which it comes. The third lecture was entitled (The problem of desertification of systems and soil degradation from an environmental perspective) delivered by Prof. Dr. Ibrahim Mahdi al-Salman from the College of Education for Pure Sciences (Ibn Al-Haitham) who is an expert at the Department of Water, Environment and Energy, He presented a detailed definition of the ecosystem, which is the geochemical and functional unit of the environment where living organisms interact with each other and with the factors of the surrounding environment. The workshop ended with the presentation of many solutions and proposals, the most important of which is the need for integration in programs to combat desertification between Iraq and the countries of the surrounding region and allocating money within the general budget of the country to confront this very critical problem.