"Why not use roads to direct & collect water in desirable locations, rather than undesirable ones?
Every year, the region’s farmers take part in a volunteer restoration effort known as “mass mobilization,” rebuilding terraces & clearing irrigation canals. In 2015, the mobilization included the application of Green Roads principles. Ethiopian farmers dug new trenches & ponds & installed “floodwater spreaders” — low earthen berms that channeled road runoff into adjacent fields of maize, wheat, & barley. Nearly 20 countries have either implemented #GreenRoads for #Water or plan to begin soon, & 1000s of kilometers of roads, worldwide, have already received Green Roads interventions. Engineers have employed its tenets in Ethiopia & Bangladesh, & the concept is rapidly spreading to places as diverse as Somaliland, Tajikistan, & Bolivia. Green Roads for Water offers one potential path that repositions roads as environmental assets." #earthworks#permaculturehttps://e360.yale.edu/features/green-roads
In regard to the #ClimateCrisis, IMO, there is no shortage of solutions for many myriad, curiously connected, problems (not to mention #overshoot#predicaments). Where we're slacking, it seems, is deployment of them (at least the scale of the Civilian Conservation Corps [1933 to '42], for example). Landscape rehabilitation, i.e. 'hands-on' application of long-practiced earth- & water-work techniques, used by humans over 1000s of years; #CheckDams / pits / channels / #acequias / #ponds; mimicking beavers, essentially. Slowing water down, spreading it out, & sinking it in, as the #permaculture aphorism goes. The gathering together of actual human beings to lay hands on and apply simple tools to generate radical regenerative shifts in the regional #watershed#ecology & #hydrology (as well as health & trade) is being modeled for the world to see, in various locales. It's one thing to watch a video. To make it happen everywhere is both necessary AND possible. Start yesterday if not sooner.https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLwIZ5tgj-b_R8F_TpYQRhkoQCNvx7evTm
Ancient #earthworks: Earthmovers of the Amazon
by Charles C. Mann
“...some of the densest populations and the most elaborate cultures in the Amazon”—cultures fully as sophisticated as the better known, though radically different, cultures of the Aztecs, Incas, and Mayas. Although these still unnamed peoples abandoned their earthworks between 1400 and 1700 C.E., Erickson says, they permanently transformed regional #ecosystems, creating “a richly patterned & humanized landscape” that is “one of the most remarkable human achievements on the continent.” https://www.sas.upenn.edu/~cerickso/baures/Mann2.html
Our October issue is out! Featuring great #archaeology like:
⛵ Long-distance exchange in #Viking Scandinavia
🏺 The colourful reality of the #ParthenonMarbles
🌄 Uncovering the stories of ancient #earthworks in Britain