Rainwater Harvesting for Drylands and Beyond

Rainwater Harvesting for Drylands and Beyond PDF

Author: Brad Lancaster

Publisher:

Published: 2013

Total Pages: 0

ISBN-13: 9780977246434

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"This revised and expanded second edition increases potential for on-site harvests with more integrated tools and strategies for solar design, a primer on your water/energy/carbon connections, descriptions of water/erosion flow patterns and their water-harvesting response, and updated illustrations to show you how to do it all."--Publisher description.

Rainwater Harvesting for Drylands and Beyond, Volume 2, 2nd Edition

Rainwater Harvesting for Drylands and Beyond, Volume 2, 2nd Edition PDF

Author: Brad Lancaster

Publisher:

Published: 2019-05-15

Total Pages: 0

ISBN-13: 9780977246441

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2020 independent Press Award Winner--Green Book Category Rainwater Harvesting for Drylands and Beyond, Volume 2 is a how-to guide enabling you to "plant the rain" by creating water-harvesting "earthworks" or "rain gardens." Earthworks are simple, inexpensive strategies and landforms that passively harvest multiple sources of free on-site water including rainfall, stormwater runoff, air conditioning condensate, and greywater within "living tanks" of soil and vegetation. The plants then pump the water back out in the form of beauty, food, shelter, wildlife habitat, timber and forage, while controlling erosion, reducing down-stream flooding, dropping utility costs, increasing soil fertility, and improving water and air quality. This revised and expanded full-color second edition builds on the information in Volume 1 by showing you how to turn your yard, school, business, park, and neighborhood into lively, regenerative producers of resources. Conditions at home will improve as you simultaneously enrich the ecosystem and inspire the surrounding community. Learn to select, place, size, construct, and plant your chosen earthworks. All is made easier and more effective by the illustrations of natural patterns of water and sediment flow with which you can collaborate or mimic. Detailed step-by-step instructions with over 550 images show you how to do it, and plentiful stories of success motivate you so you will do it!

Rainwater Harvesting for Drylands and Beyond, Volume 1, 3rd Edition

Rainwater Harvesting for Drylands and Beyond, Volume 1, 3rd Edition PDF

Author: Brad Lancaster

Publisher: Rainsource Press

Published: 2019-10-15

Total Pages: 749

ISBN-13: 0977246469

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Turn water scarcity into water abundance; as you enable your home, yard, school, place of worship, and/or neighborhood to generate more resources and life! Rainwater Harvesting for Drylands and Beyond, Volume 1, 3rd Edition, is the best-selling, award-winning guide on how to conceptualize, design, and implement a diverse array of highly effective and inexpensive strategies, which harvest and enhance the combined potential of many free on-site resources (such as rainwater, greywater, sun, wind, shade, soil fertility, and more). Clearly written with more than 290 illustrations, this full color edition helps endow you and your community with new capabilities; reduce your cost of living; plant abundant self-irrigating gardens; construct and retrofit buildings that power, light, heat, and cool themselves; and create community-building street-side forests that grow beauty, food, carbon-sequestration, flood-control, and wildlife habitat. Stories of people who are vibrantly welcoming rain, sun, wind, and shade into their lives and landscapes will invite you to do the same!

Rainwater Harvesting for Drylands and Beyond

Rainwater Harvesting for Drylands and Beyond PDF

Author: Brad Lancaster

Publisher:

Published: 2008

Total Pages: 419

ISBN-13: 9780977246410

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Turn water scarcity into water abundance! Earthworks are one of the easiest, least expensive, and most effective ways of passively harvesting and conserving multiple sources of water in the soil. Associated vegetation then pumps the harvested water back out in the form of beauty, food, shelter, wildlife habitat, and passive heating and cooling strategies, while controlling erosion, increasing soil fertility, reducing downstream flooding, and improving water and air quality. Building on the information presented in Volume 1, this book shows you how to select, place, size, construct, and plant your chosen water-harvesting earthworks. It presents detailed how-to information and variations of a diverse array of earthworks, including chapters on mulch, vegetation, and greywater recycling so you can customize the techniques to the unique requirements of your site. Real life stories and examples permeate the book, including: How curb cuts redirect street runoff to passively irrigate flourishing shade trees planted along the street How check dams have helped create springs and perennial flows in once-dry creeks How infiltration basins are creating thriving rain-fed gardens How backyard greywater laundromats are turning "wastewater" into a resource growing food, beauty, and shade that builds community, and more. How to create simple tools to read slope and water flow More than 225 illustrations and photographs

Growing Food in a Hotter, Drier Land

Growing Food in a Hotter, Drier Land PDF

Author: Gary Paul Nabhan

Publisher: Chelsea Green Publishing

Published: 2013-06-14

Total Pages: 272

ISBN-13: 1603584544

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How to harvest water and nutrients, select drought-tolerant plants, and create natural diversity Because climatic uncertainty has now become "the new normal," many farmers, gardeners and orchard-keepers in North America are desperately seeking ways to adapt their food production to become more resilient in the face of such "global weirding." This book draws upon the wisdom and technical knowledge from desert farming traditions all around the world to offer time-tried strategies for: Building greater moisture-holding capacity and nutrients in soils Protecting fields from damaging winds, drought, and floods Harvesting water from uplands to use in rain gardens and terraces filled with perennial crops Delecting fruits, nuts, succulents, and herbaceous perennials that are best suited to warmer, drier climates Gary Paul Nabhan is one of the world's experts on the agricultural traditions of arid lands. For this book he has visited indigenous and traditional farmers in the Gobi Desert, the Arabian Peninsula, the Sahara Desert, and Andalusia, as well as the Sonoran, Chihuahuan, and Painted deserts of North America, to learn firsthand their techniques and designs aimed at reducing heat and drought stress on orchards, fields, and dooryard gardens. This practical book also includes colorful "parables from the field" that exemplify how desert farmers think about increasing the carrying capacity and resilience of the lands and waters they steward. It is replete with detailed descriptions and diagrams of how to implement these desert-adapted practices in your own backyard, orchard, or farm. This unique book is useful not only for farmers and permaculturists in the arid reaches of the Southwest or other desert regions. Its techniques and prophetic vision for achieving food security in the face of climate change may well need to be implemented across most of North America over the next half-century, and are already applicable in most of the semiarid West, Great Plains, and the U.S. Southwest and adjacent regions of Mexico.

Gardening with Less Water

Gardening with Less Water PDF

Author: David A. Bainbridge

Publisher: Storey Publishing

Published: 2015-12-29

Total Pages: 129

ISBN-13: 1612125824

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2016 Silver Nautilus Book Award Winner for Green Living & Sustainability Are you facing drought or water shortages? Gardening with Less Water offers simple, inexpensive, low-tech techniques for watering your garden much more efficiently — using up to 90 percent less water for the same results. With illustrated step-by-step instructions, David Bainbridge shows you how to install buried clay pots and pipes, wicking systems, and other porous containers that deliver water directly to a plant’s roots with little to no evaporation. These systems are available at hardware stores and garden centers; are easy to set up and use; and work for garden beds, container gardens, and trees.

Prickly Pear Cactus Medicine

Prickly Pear Cactus Medicine PDF

Author: Ran Knishinsky

Publisher: Inner Traditions / Bear & Co

Published: 2004-06-07

Total Pages: 148

ISBN-13: 9780892811496

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Examines the health benefits of the prickly pear cactus, summarizing the literature and research on its use in treating diabetes, high cholesterol, obesity, and other ailments, and including information about application and dosage.

Essential Rainwater Harvesting

Essential Rainwater Harvesting PDF

Author: Rob Avis

Publisher: New Society Publishers

Published: 2018-12-11

Total Pages: 178

ISBN-13: 1550926675

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Design a rainwater harvesting system for any home in any climate. Water is a crucial resource increasingly under stress. Yet rainfall, even in arid climates, can make up a sizable portion of any home, acreage, or farm's water requirements if harvested and utilized with care. The key is appropriate planning and high-quality site- and climate-specific design. Essential Rainwater Harvesting is a comprehensive manual for designing, building, and maintaining water harvesting systems for the warm and cold climates of the world. Presenting design considerations and approaches for the most common household rainwater supply scenarios – primary, supplemental, and off-grid supply – this step-by-step approach covers: Considerations for full-property water security Demand planning and conservation strategies Supply calculations and design implications for extreme rainfall and drought Materials selection and water quality System and site assessment Sizing and design of gutters, conveyance, tanks, and pumps Pre-filtration, filtration, and disinfection options System maintenance and upkeep This practical resource provides DIYers, trades, and rainwater practitioners with the essential tools, methods, and technical know-how to design, build, and maintain rainwater harvesting systems anywhere. Rob Avis, P.Eng and Michelle Avis, P.Eng own and operate Adaptive Habitat, a leading edge property design firm for resilient homes, acreages, and farms and Verge Permaculture, a globally recognized award-winning education business. They have over 20 years of combined experience in project management, ecological design, and sustainable technologies, which they share at vergepermaculture.ca from their suburban house and yard that they've transformed into a model of cold climate urban permaculture in Calgary, Alberta.

The Permaculture Earthworks Handbook

The Permaculture Earthworks Handbook PDF

Author: Douglas Barnes

Publisher: New Society Publishers

Published: 2017-09-01

Total Pages: 194

ISBN-13: 155092639X

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Maximize your water harvesting potential with efficient, cost-effective earthworks In the face of drought and desertification, well-designed, water harvesting earthworks such as swales, ponds, and dams are the most effective way to channel water into productive use. The result can be increased food production, higher groundwater levels, reduced irrigation needs, and enhanced ecosystem resilience. Yet, due to a lack of knowledge, designers, and landowners often build earthworks that are costly, inappropriately sized and sited, or even dangerous. The Permaculture Earthworks Handbook is the first dedicated, detailed guide to the proper design and construction of water harvesting earthworks. It covers the function, design, and construction methods for nine main types of water harvesting earthworks across a full range of climates. Coverage includes: Swales, ponds, dams, hugelkultur, net-and-pan systems, spate irrigation, and more Cost versus benefit of different earthworks Assessing site needs and suitability Soil types and hydrology Designing for maximum efficiency and lowest cost Risk assessment and safe construction Stacking functions and integrating earthworks into a design This practical handbook is the essential resource for permaculture designers, teachers and students, landowners, farmers, homesteaders, landscape architects, and others involved in maximizing the water harvesting potential of any landscape at the lowest cost and impact. Douglas Barnes is a permaculture designer trained in Australia by Bill Mollison and Geoff Lawton. He has designed and built earthworks in North America, Japan, and Andra Pradesh, India. He lives in Tweed, Ontario in a passive solar house he designed and built, and he blogs at permaculturerelections.com.

Water and Cereals in Drylands

Water and Cereals in Drylands PDF

Author: Parviz Koohafkan

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2012-05-04

Total Pages: 122

ISBN-13: 1136548874

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This topic is central to contemporary concerns for more sustainable agricultural development. This is a well-written and clear book, with excellent data, tables and illustrations, addressing issues of water use, climate change, poverty and small farmers. The authors are highly respected and complement each other's acknowledged international expertise.' Professor Jules Pretty, University of Essex, UK 'This useful guide shows that there is great potential for increasing the productive capacity of smallholder farms in the drylands via a range of water management techniques, from the simple to the more complex. Providing a theoretical grounding and a practical guide, Water and cereals in the drylands will appeal to workers on-location as well as students, researchers and policymakers.' New Agriculturalist Cereals are by far the most important source of food throughout the world, either directly for human consumption or indirectly in the form of animal feed for livestock products consumed as food. With world population set to rise to nine billion by 2050, there is an urgent need to examine ways to increase cereal production. Indeed recently the future of cereal production and consumption has been complicated by rising energy prices and the economics of biofuels, which are competing for the use of cereals. One way to increase cereal production is by the more effective use of marginal dryland areas. This book reviews the potential for increased cereal production in drylands across the world, from the USA, Australia and Southern Europe to Asia and Africa. It describes how improved water conservation, water harvesting and investment options can contribute to this, and suggests policies for the more efficient use of existing natural resources in order to lessen the dependence of agriculture on further irrigation development.