I read someone else suggest Permaculture as a way of mitigating some of the affects of monsoons in these types of areas.
Does anyone have any evidences of such a thing working?
Does anyone have any evidences of such a thing working?
A good example of a similar project in India, as covered by Andrew Millison: https://youtu.be/jDMnbeW3F8A
Sepp Holzer did a similar project in Portugal: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OUryneCjxV4 ...I believe he also did some pretty large projects in the middle east, but I can't find any vids on them at the moment.
Geoff Lawton has done a ton of projects like this, but maybe not at the landscape wide scales like the projects above.
Probably the best book on the basic principles of how to do it - Rainwater Harvesting for Drylands and Beyond by Brad Lancaster. Also the book Water For Every Farm by P.A. Yeomans is pretty good as well, but not as accessible of a read.
TLDR - To keep desert monsoons from flooding areas downstream, dig a landscape wide network of swales and basins to catch, soak and sink the water into the soil. Properly dug, such earthworks recharge aquifers while stopping flooding and erosion.
But maybe I'm not understanding the solution. Can you explain more the idea?
Permaculture is: the development of agricultural ecosystems intended to be sustainable and self-sufficient.
I presume GP meant that by having more persistent vegetation in the area, that vegitation would do vegetation things and help with flood control.
I'm sceptical when I see agriculture wrapped in hype terms. I think that engineering will play a bigger role here. Forest restauration and dams that would retain soil and water and absorb part of the hit will help.
Just to speculate about possible partial solutions, I think that in plain areas subject to frequent flooding they could erect small hills and build the houses over those to defend homes. As floods will increase in the future, the sooner they start, the better.
They could also to dig a system of storm ponds. So will have many soil to build the hills. Moving soil can be done in the same step. The base of the hills should be heavily reforested to retain the soil in place. As a bonus you increase the forested area and help nature to flourish.
The other solution would be to dig concrete canals for as water highways but that would remove the main reason why people lives there: Very rich soil for agriculture plus water. You don't want all of this water lost in the sea
Storm ponds would play a benefit role to store water for the dry season also.
I haven't seen a list of such measurements from permaculture, but I know it can be used to regreen deserts (as shown in Jordan, Saudi Arabia, Arizona and elsewhere). And I assume permaculture vastly increases water infiltration. Geoff Lawton has videos showing Zaytuna Farm happily surviving drought and flood alike.
If farmers switched from conventional agriculture to some combination of regenerative agriculture and permaculture, most flooding would be prevented. Their own fields would easily infiltrate rain, eliminating runoff that builds up into flooding.
The article mentions that in addition to Pakistan getting double the normal amount of rain, increased glacier melt is filling the Indus river. I assume that in the theoretical situation of all farmers in Pakistan practicing regenerative ag or permaculture, that land on the Indus would flood. But not 1/3 of the country as we're seeing now, and the flooded areas would recover faster.
In the next 20-30 years I suspect we’ll just moderate total solar irradiance as-needed by injecting moon dust into L1.
The only issue is if there are powerful countries that are actually benefiting from the warming and don’t want to cool it down bit.
Read From Dirt to Soil by Gabe Brown. He also mentions the first inch (2.5cm) infiltrates in 9 seconds! So his soil drinks up more water in 9 seconds than nearby farms do in an entire hour.
> was this a carefully controlled experiment?
NRCS water infiltration tests.
His neighbor's farm floods, his land soaks it up like a sponge.
Year-on-year his topsoil gets deeper.
Proof: oceans exist.
The key to the whole thing is if you can slow it down enough so that a sudden deluge over a day/week/month has time to slowly drain out.
Getting water into an aquifer takes time depending on how the soil is, but eventually the aquifer would rise to the surface and you'd have a marsh. Or it would rise higher and you'd have a lake.
They have three problems when used as carbon sinks:
1) They tie up land for one, otherwise, non productive purpose (the wild species living in them do not mind that, must be said)
2) Once fully grown they reach a carbon balance. This can happen surprisingly quickly, a few decades.
2) Forests do not simply sit there like a rock. Eventually they will burn unless managed. Then they simply release all that stored carbon into the atmosphere.
Regenerative agriculture is a much better carbon sink. The process of storing the carbon increases the soil fertility so it is a win/win. Soils can get very deep so there is not a natural limit like for forests.
A draw back is measuring the carbon sunk. I do not know of anybody doing that (a market opportunity?). An important part of carbon farming is selling the "carbon credits" (a mad bad and sad idea, but it is a thing) to do that there must be an accepted measure of carbon sequestration, like there is for trees.
Not a short term carbon sink only.
AFAIK they also create a more moderate micro climate, reducing soil temperature, retaining humidity and rain while keeping it in the soil, reducing the risk of draughts.
Of course regenerative agriculture is much better but the effort to implement it at a scale is incomparably greater, while it should not be shunned.
Also agroforestry will help with making agriculture possible in larger areas of land.
I went to check the above sentence, and the first hit was this detailed article from Washington State, which analyses Brown's claims in detail, and explains why the scientific community is skeptical of them:
https://csanr.wsu.edu/regen-ag-solid-principles-extraordinar...
Anyway, even if, as Gabe Brown claims, regenerative agriculture is an order of magnitude more effective than expected, and you applied it to 100% of the land in Pakistan, it would still only reduce flooding by less than a foot.
How do you know that?
How deep do roots go? Do worms dig? Do you know?
I do not. But I am not making assumptions
Informally yes, but the scientific way is to use a ring infiltrometer: https://www.fao.org/3/s8684e/s8684e0a.htm -- Basically instead of digging a hole, you pound a pipe into the ground and then fill the pipe with water.
As for agricultural practices being able to change soil composition multiple feet down, trees and tap-rooted plants are very effective at placing large volumes of organic matter at depth. One example, Lacy Phacelia (Phacelia tanacetifolia) is an annual plant that produces a dense fibrous root system that reaches a depth of 4 feet; in the fall the Phacelia plants die, and their roots decompose at depth, creating pathways for water infiltration while also increasing soil organic matter at depth. The same goes with other trees and shrubs. The farmer from the "It ain't much but it's honest work" meme, Dave Brandt, has some really enjoyable presentations on youtube about improving soil composition at depth.
In terms of projects whose primary aim is flood prevention / aquifer recharge, John D. Liu, Andrew Millison, and Geoff Lawton all have documented quite a few projects that have been very successful in addressing the problem.