Heal the Planet with PONDS

[Music] we can heal the planet with ponds and in this video i'm going to share with you the teachings of the world's most brilliant pond builders about how to turn degraded landscapes and degraded ecosystems back in to food-rich water-rich and nature-rich environments there's a couple caveats here obviously there's more to healing the world than just building ponds and ponds are certainly not appropriate in every climate because of evaporation but if designed well and placed in the right location ponds can shift the whole dynamics of a landscape from poverty to abundance for both humans and for nature so come take this journey with me into the awesome world of permaculture ponds so we are here in corvallis oregon at the home of the oregon state university beavers and actual beavers [Music] beavers are the world's greatest ecosystem engineers sculpting the landscape with their dams creating paradise ponds and diverse wetlands and bringing great richness abundance and biodiversity to the landscape in this video we're going to look at what beavers can teach us about healing degraded landscapes and about fixing our hydrologic cycle and how we can actually mimic the great works of the beavers to restore our own permaculture landscapes and take them from a state of degradation to a state of magnificent abundance so you can see the abundance of this permaculture design landscape here at seven seeds farm in southern oregon so one of the ways that we design in permaculture is to observe nature and see the cycles of fertility the watershed the species and all of the patterns in which life exists beavers are a prime example of a keystone species that's maintaining the hydrology of the whole ecosystem we need to do work to reintroduce beavers to protect beavers but in the meantime humans can step into our full potential and become the new keystone species for restoring the watersheds of the world and part of that is learning from and mimicking the patterns of the beavers like here at seven seeds farm where they're spreading water across the landscape soaking water in and re-establishing the hydrology that was lost when the beavers were lost from this landscape permaculture has a method and the method that we restore watersheds with permaculture is based upon the brilliant work of the greatest ecosystem engineers in the world the beavers oregon's called the beaver state so you can imagine that there was a time when beaver dams like this existed in every little stream and rivulet and river in fact before europeans arrived there was an estimated 100 to 400 million beaver in the north american continent where today there's about 9 million left so this is what the stream looked like without the beavers a deep in size channel eroding the sides with nutrients and water just flowing and exiting out the system we can look at satellite imagery from just a few years ago and we can see that where the ponds are now all used to look like this in just a few years these beavers have built these small dams all up and down the stream they've gnawed down trees with their huge sharp teeth and then harvested the logs and wove the wood together these dams serve not only to slow the flow of water but they're also nets for nutrient flow where sediment flowing down the stream collects in these ponds and the wood the beavers placed here decomposes so this is actually one of their old dams that's blown out here but they've made these little dams all up and down this stream here you'll see that these dams they're not solid like we think of a dam that holds back water they're permeable water actually moves through these dams they're just made of sticks that are all woven and tangled together with mud and sediment in between and so they're not holding back the water right they're just slowing the water and as they slow the water down and the water then soaks in turning the surrounding landscape into a giant sponge together between the sediment and the wood the level of the channel builds up and the creek is no longer just contained within the channel but it raises up and spreads out laterally across the landscape here's where the beavers have raised the level of the channel through their dams and ponds and now the water is actually moving laterally across the landscape creating these wetland meadows that are flooded as the water moves horizontally out from the streams so the beavers create habitat for all kinds of other species especially building ponds like this the beavers actually create habitat for ducks now if you know oregon state university beavers you'll know that our rivals are the university of oregon ducks the ducks would not even have a place to live if it wasn't for the beavers creating ponds for them so when the water leaves the channel of the creek and spreads out horizontally across the landscape there's more surface area contact between land and water so there's more space for water to soak into the ground that's definitely the strategy that's employed in permaculture design landscapes so in this farm water's diverted from creek into this big pond and then when it overflows from this big pond it then zigzags back and forth across a whole landscape down into other ponds below a lot of times we think of diverting water from a creek as damaging the ecosystem and taking water for agricultural landscapes but in this case diverting water from the creek through this permaculture system here is actually enhancing the ecosystem enhancing the hydrology just like the beavers so here at cougar mountain farm in saginaw western oregon we've got an amazing amount of biodiversity increase by having this pond right here you can see all these different edge species all around the pond and then in the pond itself we have aquatic species and fish and the effect of having open water in this landscape where there's no other open water during the dry season it provides habitat for all sorts of species to exist and thrive here in this landscape cougar mountain farm is a forested sponge punctuated by open water storages with biodiversity and a healthy hydrology we've got seven different ponds throughout this watershed here they're unlined ponds so they're built with compacted clay so there's not a lot of seepage coming from these ponds down into the water table but there certainly is some seepage and it varies from pond to pond in a place like this we've got water storage we've got vegetation so between improving the soil improving the vegetative cover the sponginess of the soil and having these multiple reservoirs we begin to have this real cumulative effect on the hydrology of this whole watershed so just take a look at the difference in the landscape between the clear-cut industrial forest and the forested cooker mountain farm here so at seven seeds farm we can see the habitat effects of ponds all around the ponds the edges we see a diversity of plants we've seen pollywogs salamanders fish i just saw a great blue heron fly over so when the water is infiltrated all throughout this farm it soaks into the ground and it spreads into the surrounding landscape the native ecosystem here comes right up to the margins of the farm and is actually integrated in the farm so the native ecosystem also benefits from this continual recharge of the aquifer creating a more rich healthy fire resistant forest and creating a more biodiverse and abundant ecosystem so even in arid areas like this pond in rajasthan india where because of livestock browsing there's no plants growing around the ponds we can see that waterfowl are attracted to the open water there's going to be a lot of evaporation in hot deserts like this one which is not ideal but this is a monsoonal climate so there's so much rain that falls in a short time and so much water flowing across the land during heavy monsoons that large open water bodies are needed to store it for future use so now in this hot desert environment they're raising water buffalo irrigating crops and recharging groundwater tables because of their ponds this series of ponds in rajasthan provides seepage into the water table that's directly accessed by people in nearby wells just like the beaver they're creating a network of ponds on multiple drainages throughout the watershed the alternative here is that during monsoon rains the water rushes through the drainage system in a heavy torrent and leaves the area with this series of ponds there's water table recharge and water for livestock and irrigation just like the beavers choose their locations carefully the good sighting of one small dam can make quite a large pond rehydrating the banks of the lake and creating a great deal of surface area contact between water and land while also creating water and food security so what do we have to learn from the beavers the beavers are changing the entire watershed they're changing the duration that it takes the flow of water to get from the top to the bottom of the watershed and restoring ecosystems along the way they're building up the level of the channel which then allows the water to spread laterally across the landscape they're sinking water into the ground in order to recharge subsurface aquifers they're capturing organic matter in the ponds and woody debris and they're holding that matter higher up in the landscape instead of having nutrient wash all the way down through the system and out into the ocean so this stream used to be ephemeral meaning it only flowed for certain months of the year after seven seeds did all of this water management work here the stream flow became perennial meaning it flows all year round and the downstream neighbors actually reported the water level in their wells going up and spring flow increased this is not just coincidence because there are plenty of people here in southern oregon whose water supply is actually drying up people are moving away because their water is disappearing but this farm the waters actually increasing even through continual long-term drought and now 22 years into this water project here the hydrology of this whole region downstream has benefited from the work on this site just like the hydrology of all the areas downstream from beaver dams benefit from their work beavers are the great ecosystem engineers and in order for us to return this landscape to its highest potential of biodiversity and biomass we need to learn from these brilliant creatures so when beavers were lost from the landscape it was a great ecological tragedy and one that we're still suffering from today that's why i'm saying we need to think like beavers we need to act like beavers and we actually need to take the place of the beavers in our design development and restoration of degraded landscapes around the world we need to heal the planet with ponds [Music] you

Channel: Andrew Millison

Views: 326,860

Keywords: permaculture design, farm water management, sustainable development, down to earth, water harvesting, Andrew Millison, permaculture, regenerative agriculture, beavers, oregon state university, hydrology, Seven Seeds Farm, Siskiyou Seeds, Rajasthan water, rajasthan water harvesting, permaculture ponds, pond design, permaculture oregon, permaculture homestead, regenerative agriculture homestead, beavers building a dam, hydrology civil engineering, water harvesting india

Id: 43bmtqKDhBE

Length: 12min 46sec (766 seconds)

Published: Mon Jun 20 2022

Reddit Comments

[u/AutoModerator]

Want to talk with your fellow apes and apettes to discuss how you can change the world together? Then join our discord: https://discord.gg/C3fK5Na6Tc

I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please contact the moderators of this subreddit if you have any questions or concerns.

[u/patatkwab]

Very insightful, but also very American. I've built my own ponds and would like to make it my job during and after moass, anyone with experience setting up such company. I want to target rich estates and governmental areas as my clients.

[u/bonerinho_]

Damn thanks dude that was really interesting and inspiring! I love ponds and fish and could see myself digging into such a topic.

I put it on my Post Squeeze To-Do-List. Keep the information flowing fellow ape! :)