#buildsoil

This leads to Erosion rates more similar to mountain systems then the low lands where the soil formed. We are burning through our soil to grow and crash quite a few civs

You have to understand. The buffering capacity of our plants souls* could have handled the CO2 from fossil fuels. Only what we used fossil fuels for was to increase erosion, change the balance of water runoff, deforest, and plow over the grasslands every April. 8/?

*Sorry about the autocorrect to soul. Lol

I have to be off-line for a spell but I’ll continue with a discussion about how we design to accelerate that soil building process. Including some references in case studies

So i want to introduce a few puzzle pieces. The first is the work of this man PA Yeomans. He was a mining geologist who retired and starting thinking about soil care from a Geomorphologist POV

When he set off to tend his land, the Australian gov provided soil conservation literature focused on contour plowing. Based on the view that soil is precious(it is) but that it’s impossible to speed its production (it’s not)

The main problems with contour based design can be seen from this image by PA. On land contours are not parallel. This slows water but it drains ridges and concentrates water in valleys. Overdrying and overwriting soil at the same time. Can even blow out.

PA developed a way of understanding topographic features to organize landscapes so that: water is infiltrated, spread, extra collected stored as high as possible to re-hydrate during dry times. He realized this could be used to organize everything on broad acre farmland

This prob is too dense for Twitter. But imagine land as big ridges between streams and they have smaller ridges and valleys. Imagine the inflection point in those smaller valleys where the land nicks in like a clavicle * in the pic 13/

PA called them keyponts and they are : the highest water concentrating point in land, where soils thicken, & any line parallel to this on the land concentrated water above but spreads water below

Now he had a way to organize features. First he placed ponds at those points. Collection drains could be set to collect overland flow and move it into those ponds. Then any roads could follow those drains with minimal impact actually helping water collection.

And bellow, the land could be plowed with a subsoiler that sharpers the subsoil without turning the soil. And he would plow down on ridges and up on valleys which means water spreads.

PAs land:

And here in red are plow lines (or how to organize and water receiving element such as tree rows to spread water along ridges)

Roads, buildings, pasture, agroforestry- whatever could be designed. Roads can also be placed along ridges, Trees get planted along ridges & in valleys and along streams with complete connectivity. And humans move out of valleys to ridges, leaving valleys for soil and wildlife.

This planning process is like adding sourdough starter to flour and sugar and adding just enough water. The subsoil can be reached by water, roots, inoculated by microbes. you can rapidly add feet of topsoil. Keyline farms are amazing. They stop flashy creeks & can repair land

And it should be viewed as appropriate for where people live and farm. Ag land not the giant ranges that could be bison prairies.

So there is more. PAs last book was on how these design methods could be applied to cities and towns. That towns could extend along ridges,roads could direct water into Catchment which could water yards then agricultural & reforested lowlands. He called it “the city forest”

The City Forest by P.A. Yeoman hosted on SoilandHealth.org

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Think about what this would mean. Human settlements designed so they are collectors of water, human labor, and even humanure, directed towards the generation and care of soils and forestry.

So let’s talk examples. Frederick Law Olmstead designed a number of Stormwater collecting parks Into towns. One of the most famous being Boston’s Emerald Necklace. /24

His son John Charles did something similar when he designed Portland Oregon’s water collecting neighborhood of Lauralhurst. Before the current Stormwater system, Laurelhurst Park was the detention basin.

Next step in the journey Is Davis California in the 80s where Mike Corbett designed village homes a neighborhood designed to handle Stormwater by soaking it in Swales and orchards rather then management systems

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Village_Homes

Here’s a video of Mollison touring the place in the 1990s. https://youtu.be/v_05oRQxssQ I’ve heated that they have managed several very large storm events that flooded their neighbors. All while building the soil and restoring the water table.

Village Homes with Bill Mollison (improved audio)

So:,remember this and this question: what if we really looked for a city that took this approach?

Well, here's Siena Italy which started as a number of little settlements and converged in the hills of Tuscany: that big public square is the Piaza Del Campo- built in the key point of the landscape, The roads collect water into drains and reservoirs under the piazzas.

Link to tweet with 3 Images here

28/ if you look at the landscape you see how this hilltown stayed on the uplands and collected water to irrigate the lowlands.

Link to tweet with 4 Images here

Underground passages for water, the 'fountain of the earth' sits at the keypoint, and the lowland valleys are irrigated and saved for soil...

Link to tweet with 2 Images here

more images of siena form GIS models im building

I used to think that CO2 in the atmosphere was just pollution with nowhere to go, but it does have a place it can go:  Soil is the main storage of carbon on land. There are techniques that are already known, understood, and practiced which show us that we can replenish these storages of soil carbon: Earthworks: ponds, swales, drains, and well-designed roads collect, hold, and infiltrate water, improving the capacity of the soil to support life. These can be aspects of both rural and urban developments.

Vegetation: food forests, perrenial grasses, and oases collect CO2 and make sugars and proteins that are pumped into the soil. These systems can grow food and materials, and create products for market.

Microorganisms: Fungi, bacteria, nemotodes, protozoa, and earthworms can be analyzed and then enhanced through good compost practices. They convert these carbohydrates and proteins into complex long-storage soil organic matter and enhance the growth of the plants. I’m researching, writing, teaching and hope to someday launch a design firm focused on these techniques, which will grow into a worker-owned cooperative capable of addressing and reversing climate change. When our country experienced drought and soil-loss in the 1930’s, the government created opportunities for unemployed Americans to dig in and repair the damage. Without that kind of leadership today, we have to figure this out for ourselves. We will put people to work on earth-repair, in ways that are democratic and collaborative, and at a living wage. We will design productive farms, residences, and urban infrastructure, all that intentionally sequester carbon in rich, fertile, soil.

We need your help to plant the seed and start the World Tree. My first phase was to do preliminary research and now I feel confident. I've taught workshops, consulted, and taught.

This second phase involves tweeting, teaching, organizing, doing hands-on projects, documenting case students and writing blog entries and articles.

Within 10 years, we need to sequester 420Gt of CO2 in order to stay with in 1.5 degrees of temperature rise and that means a lot of soil needs to be built. So, Over the following year I hope to have moved on a few of of my projects including: - outlining an action plant for homes, towns, regions, and the world in the form of a book and website. - having some really good case-studies made. Help me make this happen.

$5, $10, $20, $100, or $500, whatever you can give is going to help.

Any amount is so appreciated.

If you donate, I'll keep you up to date on the progress. I'll use a private blog and invite all of those who contribute...

If we collaborate, we can fix the climate crisis in our lifetime. Let's start now! Please help to spread the word.

Thank you sincerely, Jordan Fink”

i know a lot of people have come to see Organics as a luxury but it's important to remember where the word comes from: a focus on the organic matter content of soil rather than applying salts and fertilizers which kill soil biology.

we used around half of the world's oil to tear apart and oxidize the carbon storage in the soil and, unlike a lot of the BIG PLANS out there to block the sun or fertilize  oceans, fixing soil loss would be a way to direct our remaining oil energy to solve a TON of other problems:

if we were to focus our civilization onto restoring the basis of life: the storage and moderation of water, the capacity of landscapes to support complex grasslands and forests, then we can have a basis for a future.

Regenerative Agriculture is possible & understood: polycultures, agroforestry, silva-pastoralism, intention planned grazing: all can mimic and work with natural systems and restore the link between CO2, plant, fungi and bacteria, and soil storage. While feeding people. Right now.

This is the one change this is within our grasp that can happen on the scale of space (pretty larger areas) and time (in a time-frame of 10ish years) that can actually fix a number of problems that are about to be irreversible:

ocean dead zones, the breakdown of communities, lack of local resilience, lack of jobs, broken food system, famine, flooding, die-off of insects and the food-webs that need them, etc etc etc

since the start of the industrial revolution we have used around 944,000,000,000 barrels of crude oil. Which has the same amount of energy as 91,752,708 first atom bombs.

right now, at the peak, we use 87,421,000 barrels of oil a day, which has the energy of 8,500 atom bombs.  every day we use that energy to forge metals, throw cars down the road, lift buildings, but also to rip apart the landscape.

taking apart soil has grown a large population but it also lead to the loss of more than 1/4 of all farmland over the past 50 years. and it's accelerating. what if we use that energy to stop erosion, improve infiltration, plant trees, inoculate subsoils with important microbes?

just to put in perspective the sheer energy part of the problem: “The energy released so far from crude oil is only 100th of the energy of the impact of the astroid that killed the dinosaurs 65 MYA.“

(these are slides from a talk i gave last year)

Ruddiman has argued that agricultural climate change started 10k years ago

and we are ON TRACK for the catastrophic predictions of The Limits to Growth by Donella H. Meadows and others:

but the thing is, building soil back isn't impossible and with a coordinated effort, a lot can happen. in 1970 Earl Butz changed farm policy to subsidize corn production, agriculture is one of those things that can instantly redirect a huge amount of fuel energy into new goals.

and at the same time, it is something people can do on personal, local, regional, state levels as well: we don't have to wait for the power to change.

a simple thing is to start to find soil-improving ways to replace degenerative agriculture. One I suggest is to start seriously considering Chestnuts in urban and residential contexts as a carbohydrate source. Perennial, carbon-storing, and able to produce as well as grains.

another is to rethink meat but not in the ways you think. right now, convention production is unsustainable pollutive & requires mass grain agriculture But when cows are managed in tight moving herds/they are able to be used for ecosystem repair. I have seen this with my own eyes

grassland & predators coevoled w/ clumped herds of grazers hitting deep-rooted perennial grass & moving on built the massive storages of carbon rich soil that allowed agricultural civilization to start. Now we've used up what they made: it's time to restore it. not dimming the sun

we could be planning our cities, towns, and residences to spread and store water, improve soils, and also store carbon. I would recommend looking to the water systems of Italian hilltowns, the parks of Olmstead, and the soil-building keyline systems of PA Yeomans for inspiration,

if humans started put as much energy into the improvement of the foundational life support systems as we do for the high trophic levels of tech we wouldn't have half of the problems we have now.

because we would be net-producers and ecosystems would grow in our footprints. this is possible. we know how to do it.

o, yeah, we all have to build as much soil as possible over the next ten years. not all of us even realize there is a problem so we'll have to build soil for them too. We can do this.

To put it in perspective it will require taking all of our ag lands and raising the organic matter content of the top foot by about 9%. We can shatter and inoculate subsoils and rapidly improve them through compost teas, restoring grassland, and stopping microbe-killing ag

I was ranting about this in another thread too: (LINK)

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So wow thanks for all the reads likes & retweets. I'd like to say that i've been working on these issues for years, though i'm taking a hiatus to study spatial data science to be more useful. Two years ago I was building a project to implement these ideas, and i still intend to. (LINK)

I also still keep open my ongoing gofundme fundraiser that paid for a lot of my initial research. For every $5 I get I devote at least an hour of work toward my project.

https://www.gofundme.com/f/theworldtree

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one VERY important piece to add. Most of the ideas and techniques we have in our toolkit were worked out by, the use-rights held by, and the knowledge taken from indigenous people. So when I give talks I spend a LOT of time on this slide:

well-meaning white people: "but we are trying to repair the planet. it's a good use" if it's the  technique that will work and the indigenous developers of the idea don't want to grant use-rights, then give them back the land