Rainwater Harvesting For Drylands And Beyond

What Hacker News says

1. hoshDec 2023
   For more general design patterns for water management, see Brad Landcaster's book series, "Rainwater Harvesting for Drylands and Beyond".

   In the pictures in the article, the roads form berms, and the fields are basins. It doesn't just have to be roads -- walkways threading through a smaller scale can act as berms as well. The two volume book contains many other water harvesting structures.

   As a note, Andrew Millison has a youtube video about a river system that was developed in India over the course of centuries -- deliberately engineering a delta, with flood channels. They basically did what beavers have been doing in North America (slowing down and spreading out water) for ... longer than we humans have been around.

   These ideas are not new. They have been around for a long time. It's not that we found new ways to progress, but rather, rediscovering old methods that had been dropped in our rush for modernity.

   Show morethread
2. mountaintimefrmSep 2022
   Probably the best documented example of it working is in the Loess Plateau in China. John D Liu has a couple documentaries on it, here is one: https://youtu.be/IDgDWbQtlKI

   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.

   Show morethread
3. voisinAug 2022
   Anyone interested in reading more, I highly recommend reading Brad Lancaster’s work on Rainwater Harvesting for Drylands and Beyond. He has a great introductory TED Talk too. I just finished Vol 1 of his book and started Vol 2 today. I can’t recommend his stuff enough.
   thread
4. voisinJul 2022
   I highly recommend anyone interested in solutions to read “Rainwater Harvesting for Drylands and Beyond” by Brad Lancaster. Link below. Also, he has a great video on YouTube with some of the concepts at a high level (from a TEDx) - don’t let his enthusiasm at the beginning detract from the seriousness of his message!

   https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/49338099

   thread
5. lioetersAug 2022
   Planting the Rain to Grow Abundance | Brad Lancaster | TEDxTucson - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I2xDZlpInik

   Rainwater Harvesting for Drylands and Beyond - https://www.harvestingrainwater.com/

   thread