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Tachikoma's avatar

Fanstatic pair of essays.

Two more points from the permaculture front:

* Dr. Anna Maria Primavesi and her husband talked a long time ago (since 1960s) about microbial and microfauna in soils and its role in accumulation of water, nitrogen and carbon. She talked about the link of vegetation loss in South America to droughts and rain outpouring in the Brazilian Pantanal region;

* Dr. Ernst Götsch coined the term "Syntropic Agriculture" in which lots of trees species can share the same area with different height/cover strata, bringing efficient land usage and less stressful plant life. He uses to say "water is planted/cultivated" with vegetation cover.

Both defend the idea that it is possible to have more food productivity with lower land usage (Anna Primavesi stated that half cropland would feed Brazilian population, lessening deforestation there). With adequate mechanization, I believe that their land usage practises can reduce a lot of nitrous salt/fertilizer runoff that goes to rivers and generates algal blooms nearshore.

On the same token, I remember Antonio Nobre saying once "Forests don't follow water. Forest bring water to their land".

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Rob Lewis's avatar

Fantastic exploration. Truly yeoman's work. Thank you. It is interesting how fully developed the two-legged understanding of climate (though not stated that way) was before the Charney report in 1979. I'm still trying to understand how it got lost for so long. Looking forward to part III.

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