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Comment by xhkkffbf | Hacker News Reader

There are a number of interesting videos on YouTube about people who are adding swales and rock dams to their western land to slow down the departure of rain water. Apparently just these extra terraforming can be enough to turn barren land into a green and lush forest.

Has anyone tried this on their own land? I'm tempted to try it.

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That's fantasy. If you don't live in the West it's difficult to appreciate that there simply is no water. No amount of of "swales" or rock dams change the fact that water doesn't fall from the sky in sufficient amounts to create a "lush green forest". Also every drop of water that hits the ground has been accounted for long ago and is part of some water pact. If you create a dam upstream you are guaranteed to get a visit from the water rights holders.

> Untouched and eighty years old, it was supposed to have been built by men with carts and horses during the Roosevelt years in the 1930s.

> The soil was springy and spongy when you walked on it. Like an uncompacted garden bed it was full of mulch captured by rain water. Eighty years of humus was deposited here during flash floods, without any help from mankind.

> The trees were all self seeded.

> Geoff plunged his hands into the soil and went down 8 inches of moist, black, rich, composted soil. It was still damp.

https://www.permaculturenews.org/2014/10/11/discovering-oasi...

That was what I thought too. But there are videos from people who are doing it successfully in the American west -- and in the edge areas around the Sahara.

It's worth poking around YouTube to see just what people are saying they've achieved. It changed my mind.

Actually, most of these regions have rain. (The Atacama does not!) And you do not need lush green forests right away, prairie grasses are a good start. Well-applied rain retention measures do work.

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