We've had an interesting few days, with nearly a foot of snow disappearing overnight as warm rainy weather moved in from the south. Several inches of rain dropped, and combined with snowmelt to produce major flooding throughout our region here on the shortest days of the year.
Ephemeral streams and ponds formed throughout the forest garden. Surface water flowed downslope and interacted with a network of swales, basins, and channels that we've created to distribute and retain floodwater throughout the garden. I saw many opportunities for improvements to this system. These events do not occur very often, maybe once or twice a year, so it is important to document and take advantage of this time by observing how water flows through the landscape. Our goal is to capture as much of this runoff as we can and store it as plumes of groundwater.
Harvesting floodwater not only helps our plants grow, it mitigates flooding for downstream communities. Our watershed should act as a sponge, soaking up as much water as possible, and providing wetland habitat for our native biodiversity. Instead, we tend to see increasing channelization of runoff, diverting water into more direct routes to the sea, resulting in more damaging flooding which we channelize further... This mentality of seeing flood water as a nuisance instead of a resource needs to change if we are to design more sustainable communities and overcome the challenges of a changing climate.
19 дек 2023
