Slow it, spread it, sink it, cycle it, hop it, shift it...

How to guide the water cycle

I have had all these pieces of information about water floating around in my head that was seeking to find some form, and also have been reading a ton of scientific papers about water and the atmosphere to try and piece together what exactly the climate science was saying. In preparing for a “Restoring the water cycle” class I have been teaching for the last 3 weeks, I have also been looking at a lot of real world examples of water situations in different towns around the world. In this process I got a chance to integrate all the water information into a coherent form to teach.

We had a Regenerative Water event scheduled for World Water Day, Mar 22nd, by which I had also initially hoped I could come up with one possible set of Water Principles that was simple, clear, concise and correct (our plan was that different people could come up with different water principle sets, and then we could work to come to consensus on one). As it neared I was not sure that was going to happen, because in my mind, the whole thing was still a mish mash of a lot of ideas.

Then in my last ‘Restoring the water cycle’ class I realized we could look at water in terms of different aspects:

Water Principles:

1. Water flows through a. LAND b. UNDERGROUND c. AIR

2. Water shifts HEAT around

3. Water redistributes SOIL AND SEDIMENT

4. There is a FEEDBACK LOOP between water, microbes, vegetation, animals

I presented this in my class, and listed a bunch of principles under each section, but it seemed kind of random how I listed them.

Vivek Gani suggested that perhaps we could also have an aspect about pollutants in the principles.

Then the next night, the day after my class, and less than 24 hours before my World Water Day talk, I realized these water principles could be expanded into a form that was rather elegant.

1a.LAND. SLOW IT, SPREAD IT, STORE IT

1b.UNDEGROUND SINK IT, STORE IT

1c.AIR CYCLE IT, HOP IT

2. HEAT SHIFT IT, TRANSFORM IT, REFLECT IT

3. SOIL AND SEDIMENT HOLD IT, GUIDE IT

4. POLLUTANTS CLEANSE IT

5. FEEDBACK LOOP EVOLVE IT

This form of the principles builds on Brock Dolman’s dictum of “Slow it, sink it, spread it, store it”.

This form of the Water Principles can be furthered explained to show how it helps us deal with the problems of drought, heat, floods, fires, and water scarcity.

1a. LAND

SLOW IT. Slowing water helps hydrate landscape into dry and drought seasons, and reduce wildfire risk. Slowing water weakens flood strength

SPREAD IT. Spreading water helps hydrate more of the land.Spreading water weakens flood strength

STORE IT. Ponds and wetlands can store water to hydrate landscape into dry and drought season.

1b. GROUNDWATER

SINK IT. Wetlands and richer soil help guide water downward. Sinking water can weaken floods downstream.

STORE IT. Groundwater helps store water to hydrate landscape into dry and drought seasons, and reduce wildfire risk

1c. AIR

CYCLE IT. Evapotranspiration can help increase rains in dry areas, and reduce drought. Evapotranspiration can help increase dew and fog as a way of hydrating vegetation into the dry seasons, and help reduce wildfire risk. This is increasing the small water cycle as described in Michal Kravcik, Jan Pokorny et al’s “The new water paradigm”. In the climate science papers it is referred to as moisture recycling, and precipitation recycling. Meteorologist Millan Millan described how as Spain paved over its soil with urban land, it decreased the evapotranspiration and small water cycle, so that the rains gradually decreased each decade. Hydrologist Van der Ent’s research has shown how different parts of the world have currently different precipitation recycling ratios.

HOP IT. Chains of forests and wetlands can help moisture transport inland, in the form of rain, dew, humidity, without exponential decrease. Without a chain of forests, rain decreases exponentially as we move inland. The path of rain inland is called moisture hopping in the scientific literature. Climate scientist Francina Dominguez’s research showed how the US Midwest rain moisture hops from California. So if we deforest the land between California and the Midwest we are going to have more droughts in the Midwest.

Francina Dominguez also showed forests can also slow wind so evapotranspiration does not blow so far away, or out to sea. So perhaps we can further insert another verb of CALM IT. I am not sure how much scientific agreement there is yet though on how winds are affected by forests. So this dictum is up for further discussion.

2. HEAT

SHIFT IT. Water transports heat from the surface of the earth into the atmosphere through evapotranspiration at the surface and condensation at the cloud level where latent heat is released. We can significantly cool the temperatures we live in, that life on earth lives in, by shifting the heat from the surface to higher up in the atmosphere. Water also transports heat from equator towards the poles

TRANSFORM IT. The suns energy can be partitioned between sensible heat and latent heat. Shifting sensible heat to latent heat can reduce temperatures on earth.

REFLECT IT. Forests and wetlands create more low lying clouds on average (not always). Low lying clouds usually reflect more radiation back to space, than it traps heat beneath, so they have net cooling effect.

3. SOIL&SEDIMENT

HOLDING IT. Vegetation, and fungi can help keep soil from erosion and help stop landslides during large storms.

GUIDING IT. Rivers move soil and sediment downstream, and help build ecosystems there.

4. POLLUTANTS

CLEANSING IT. Wetlands and microbes in soil can cleanse water

5. FEEDBACK LOOP. Water helps vegetation and animals grow. Vegetation and animals influence where water flows, how it shifts heat around, how it distributes sediment, and how water cleanses.

EVOLVE IT The ecosystem and water cycle goes through ecological succession in punctuated equilibrium ways that lead to more efficient use of water. Natural Sequence Farming is a method of working with land and water developed by Peter Andrews, which emphasises how the system can go through a series of ecological succession steps. So for instance next to a river, weeds are useful at the beginning because their long roots can help ground the soil, and slow the water. These weeds then lead to a richer biodiverse ecosystem through a series of punctuated equilibrium steps.

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As we look at these principles, a question arises how we can do all these things like Slow it, Spread it, Sink it, Cycle it, Hop it, Shift it etc…

I had initially the idea to create a Project Drawdown list of the top 100 water practices. With Christopher Alexander’s death last week though, I got to thinking about pattern languages. Christopher Alexander had written a famous book about architecture and urban design where different patterns were catalogued to deal with different problems. Computer scientists then used this pattern language to describe how to write software. Permaculture is also a sort of pattern language.

What if instead of the organizing the water practices as a top 100 list, we instead organized it as a pattern language? We could show which practices helped with goals and issues. So for instance there are practices that can help with the action SLOW IT. Those practices would be swales, dead biomass left in the path of water, leaky weirs, beavers, check dams, water pianos, richer soil etc… We can also for instance specify which of the practices help with lessening floods, or lessening wildfires.

So here’s the Water Practices list, which we can turn into a pattern language. We can specify which problems and goals each practice helps with.

1.PLANT MATTER/ FUNGI / BACTERIA

i) PLANTING VEGETATION- Planting vegetation that helps guide water into soil, helps evaporate water into sky, help soil health. Mycelia can help transport water
ii) DEAD BIOMASS- dead vegetation and compost can help create healthier soil, placing dead branches and leaves in path of downhill rainfall
iii) REPLACING PLANTS: replace almonds, salt-cedar etc with something less water-hungry (preferably indigenous plants).
2. HEALTHY SOILS: crop rotation, mulching, non-tilling, mycelia, compost teas, worm farming, animal poop, biodigesters, reusing sediment in one area for another
3. EARTHWORKS: swales, weirs/check dams, small ponds, terracing, key line system, rocks, guiding downhill rainfall to seep into ground replenishing, gabions, zuni waffle garden, water piano
4. ANIMAL ENGINEERS: beavers, prarie dogs, cattle, earthworms, mussels, dung beetles, wild donkeys

5. MANMADE STRUCTURES:
i)UNDOING STRUCTURES : undoing dams, concrete riverbanks, hydropower stations; depaving certain parking lots and roads, de-piping aqueducts that transport water to cities, digging out tile drainage in farms
ii) STRUCTURES : greywater, fog nets, rain barrels, qanat
6. URBAN: green rooftops, community food forests, curb-cuts, in-street water-harvesting, eddy basins, rainwater gardens, rain barrels, disconnect downspouts, downspouts to rain tanks, downspouts into soil, permeable concrete, depaving certain parking lots and roads, flood bioswales, stormwater catchment into soil & aquifers, wetlands to cleanse stormwater then guide it into aquifers below to store with wells to bring up, dust/soot pollution reduction,
7. SEWAGE: Compost toilets. Pee in nature. Greywater systems. Blackwater systems. Biochar, wetlands, wood chips, microbes, mussels, sequence of plants in drum tanks

8. RESTORATION : restoring wetlands, forests, coastal ecosystems.

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I think it would be good to distinguish this way of working with water as different than modern hydrological ways, and that we name this field that would be both a paradigm, a practice, a science, and a pattern language. These principles would be called the ‘Watercology Principles’ , the ‘Regenerative Water Principles’, the “New Water Paradigm Principles” depending on what we wanted to name the field.

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My talk about this subject

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