Absolutely spectacular video. I really appreciate seeing the footage intercut with actual high flow. Amazing how much silt is carried in the water. Really appreciate your understanding and sharing of all this knowledge. Thank you.
The ability to gently pacify water sources, stabilize existing soil embankments, create water reservoirs, build soil deposits, begin wetland development, invigorate growth of biomass..... work with nature......all in the placement of rocks..... You are blessed.
I think it was south central Oregon where we stopped to look at what looked like a series of groves of something like willow, wondering who would plant clusters of trees that way. We found out that the trees were accidental: the landowners had made catch-dams with rocks interwoven with green tree branches to help hold the structure together. Many branches from one tree species had sprouted after the very first rain, making the structures into living dams.
Excellent video. I am really impressed by the amount of work you have done. And to be able to work with such a huge flow of water, wow! We have two seasonal creeks on our property too -- I will walk them and think about gabions. And thanks also for telling us the size of your gabions as well as reporting the importance of protecting the embankments. This was a very interesting and useful video.
Kent I just discovered your tube and hope to hell you don't stop. Im looking to buy property around Robertson and develop check dams to increase the underground water. Please add more content !
Howzit... Thank you. I am working on more vids at the moment. Please follow us on Instagram, we also post short vids and info on that platform... instagram.com/p/C82DCj5i1sL/
fantastic to see that water disappearing into the ground, a really great illustration of how the water is being stored in the silt fields, just out of sight!
USGS UA-cam channel has a video on very similar small rock dams on an Arizona ranch that has had a similar effect as your “sand” dams. PS - parts of USA have benefited from the reintroduction of beavers into areas they have been eliminated from. Beaver dams have been very good at retaining water and preventing erosion PS2 - Impressed your designs can survive those high river flows.
I once hiked through an area that a dozen years earlier had been bare soil bordering an erosion gully into which some beavers had been introduced. Within five years water was flowing year-round, slowing to a trickle in the late summer. Within another five the gully was shaded by trees that grew due to the improved water retention. By the time I hiked there, out of a five-mile section three and a half miles were just a series of beaver dams shaded by trees. The beaver dams were so effective at catching sediment that except for the middle channel the water was barely knee-deep and instead of a gully that was six to ten feet wide there were ponds between twenty and sixty feet wide. It was a fun hike also because fish had returned in abundance and there was no limit to how many fish could be caught for eating along the trail.
Wonderful, the most successful use of gabions I’ve seen that can handle the short yet catastrophically torrential floods of dry land areas, and sink the water for year round availability.
You aren’t an environmentalist or Stop oil person. You actually believe in conservation. Areas with less rainfall were always a problem, you are showing the way how plentiful of rain should be used: you are awesome.
А я противоположного мнения... Уважаемий афтарчика видеосика слишком много бла-бла-бла и никакой конкретики и никакого действия... Но ето поправимо ... При первом же проекте, он может поработать у меня общим работником и понабратся практическим опитом ... Далее его видеосики станут весьма короче и весьма полезнее обществу ...
Lovely farm, great information. Wow that was a lot of water, really cool to see that those walls didn’t wash away with so much water. It’s ironic how so many people think they should fill in the wetlands to make way for more fields to grow in… then the water just end up washing away in rivers instead of infiltrating and filling up the aquifers. Awesome video.
Nice one. Very good engineering. At 26,55 we see the production terraces, and the comments about not having the structures too high in order to not break the banks. Yes But But the big But. In a flood event it is possible to have a sluice or swale outlet to irrigate a field , a production terrace, or soak a flood plain. For example, (in rough figures) if 10 megaliters goes past your property, half a megaliter gets diverted onto a flood plain or production terrace gently,,,,then the sluice or swale is shut off. or it could re enter the creek system later downstream. There's another level of engineering available here, maybe your already doing it unseen in the video.
Sure, that can work, depending on the context of the river drainage line in relation to the terraces that will allow safe engineering. I was able to achieve this on another farm I lived on in the region 15 years ago but the setup was very different to this farm. The thing is that when you get these big flood rains there is so much water flowing off the slopes into the swales anyway and the production terraces get a huge soak. With rivers, often you can get more rain upstream so the river will pump down, even though there may not be that much rain locally, and that is when a diversion system will work. The sand dam then needs to be upstream from the swales or the terrace system, with a canal or pipe drifting off from the wall of the sand dam onto the terrace or swale system. Our context here does not allow for this, but it is possible in the right setup. If there is going to be a mega rainfall, then you can, close off the canal or pipe and open in smaller flooding events. There are so many possibilities with good design, it really takes good observation and then fine tuning after the system goes through a range of different events...
Phenomenal video. Excellent narration and great footage. Loved the intercutting of the river at full flow with what it looks like "empty". Very educational, I never understood how the accumulation of silt directly feeds permanent springs. It's also amazing to see-at the top of the system in the background around 17:30-the wall of earth, what, 3 meters high? Which perfectly demonstrates your point that the river will cut deep into the landscape when given the opportunity.
I so want to try this in a town on the chihuahua sierra. We have river that runs only when it rains but the banks are so high now that adding 1 meter dams to slow the water flow and retain water would be of great benefit as the area is facing drought and desertification.
Excellent walk-through, and you can certainly see the results! I'm a big fan of building beaver dam analogs simply because I have more woody debris than rocks. Considering the amount of water you get coming through... rock is probably the better choice! Have you put gabions up at the very highest point on your property?
Great explanation of sand dam's. I would like to point out to other listeners less familiar that lifting the riverbed match's the trapped sand with your alluvial valley sand bottom so that your water field of trapped reserve flow is much broader than the stream it'self ( Aquifer) so that the effects are magnified as you have an invisible hidden dam lake that is still tight enough to allow enough resistance to allow a slow constant multi season gravity release of water back to the stream bed.
Super video. Well narrated from an informed and educated presenter. The volume of water during the flood events was breath taking. It leads me to ask how much of the upstream catchment area is actually your land? If it is all your land, then is it possible to catch more of the water where it falls (swales, leaky weirs etc) to prevent such volumes reaching the valley floor all at once? Best of luck with your future endeavours, as the earth needs people like you!
Thank you... Yes most of the catchment is on our farm, however it is far too steep and wild to do any form of earthworks on, thin rocky soils, etc... In desert environments, flood surges are standard as vegetation cover is not dense. The best you can do is to encourage the growth of perennial grasses to provide as much land cover as possible, using livestock impact where possible. But at the end of the day the flood surges are just something you have to design for wherever you possibly can. In more gentle landscapes swales, riplines, berms, diversions, pocket ponds and earth imprinting will most definitely make a huge difference, as they will not only slow, spread, sink water but encourage denser vegetation cover, which is really the ultimate way of retaining run-off.
I saw a good idea that build the weir with a v-shape ( low in the middle and high and the sides) causing the water to overflow in the middle and saving your banks
This is a great “how to” video explainer. This solution is popular in parts of Kenya. Tell me would you have a view between rock walls and concrete walls? I see concrete walls here probably aimed at water storage.
Thank you...The concrete walls are really old, probably going back to the 1940's when gabions were not around, so they used concrete to do the same thing.
Hi. Can you make a video from top to bottom? I mean, in this one we got from downstream to upstream, it will be good to see it the other way. Brilliant video as I mentioned in my earlier comment. I hope you increase the frequency of your videos 😊
Hi... Thank you, I am busy with 2 new videos on sub-soiling and river training using gabion groynes, which should be out within the next 2 weeks. Follow our instagram channel we have got up and running, we have more regular and simpler content there. However our aim is to put out 1 you tube vid a month once I get the editing side of things completely sorted... instagram.com/oudeberg.permaculture.farm/
Yes you will see on the large sand dam that is exactly what we have done. On lower walls this scour process is not a problem. Anything over 50cm in height will need a mattress below the wall unless you are able to locate the sand dam wall on rock shelf that runs across the river...
I've been making leaky weirs/check dams out of logs across seasonal creeks on my property in the arid foothills of San Diego, California. Like your sand dams, the silt deposits behind them are really a feature, not something that needs to be constantly cleared out.
Absolutely Love your work. To confirm before the sand dams the springs did not run? what was the "equation" on 15 min 30 to build the step terracing structure ? I mean how did you get to the understanding of having 3-4 levels knowing it was enough ? Also when deciding to build a sand dam you need to excavate first to build it on hard rock?
Generally you should find a rock shelf across the river to build the sand dam. In this case I did not have that luxury, during the drought the reed bed that was there died off and once it started flooding again the river started to eat down, so I started responding by building a gabion wall across the river. The steps below that wall were a response to the undercutting of the river as it went over the wall. It took 4 layers of step to finally pacify the undercutting. The Spring has always been there, however the sand dams contribute huge amounts of water to the spring reserve and extend its flow further downstream and for longer. The longer the sand dams are in place, the more water is added to the reserve.
Hi. Hydrology and geography of watershed must be considered before any erosion control/ dams are built. I absolutely agree type of vegetation must be integrated into whatever type of erosion/ water storage systems used. In your environment sand dams are great option- for me- not so much- 1 rock dams, log/rock rundowns, appropriate vegetation with careful management of tracks with rollovers, grazing, tarmac water runoff, and siting of dams.
Haven't finished yet. Are you clearing the Silt (Rock Dust) and using in plant, crop, and/or pasture. This also allows you to capture new Silt and move it out of the river bed. A filled Silt trap is no longer a Silt trap... it just runs past it in the future.
No. The river silt is not fertile, it is very sandy. My soils in the fields are extremely fertile loams. I manage soil fertility in place by integrated design between rotating livestock, legumes, subsoiling and effective guild formation. Moving around soils is not effective or possible on an agricultural scale.
A question, after the backside of the gambion gets filled with silt and forms a level field. Can, or will you, then add or extend the gabion higher allowing more silt to build up?
Hi... Good question... It all depends on how high your stream banks are. If they are really high from the silt field then you can add another row of gabions, as you do not want the river breaking its banks. You need to step them back so you do not create a sheer wall, which will cause high water impact at the base of the wall and it could undermine it. Only make the sand dam as high as your stream banks will allow...
@@kenttahir.cooper5282A follow on question. When you build your second stepped back row do you dig out the silt to the bottom level of the first row? Or perhaps do you only dig about half the height of your first gabion (25cm in your case where you use 50cm high gabions)
Yes, if the river bank system allows for it. I would do it in a step formation, so that the next row of gabions does not site on top of the current row but on the silt behind the initial wall. In that way you get a more solid wall and the water overflow is broken by the step below, reducing the impact of the water on the downside.
That is possible, it is dependent on the scale of a river. If it is a large river system it would need a total catchment system approach, with re-vegetation, swales, sand dams across the area. Smaller brooks and streams that source on a farm can be enhanced by the same holistic total approach. Streams that have dried up and used to be perennial have done so because there is too much run-off in the catchment system and not enough infiltration. Regenerative Water Harvesting Earthworks and total land cover will restore this pattern. In most cases it will need cooperation between land owners to achieve this.
I kept thinking about an "accidental" catch-dam I once saw in central Oregon: a farmer had been having trouble with deer getting into the fields and had put up a twelve-foot-high chain link fence around where he grew vegetables and had berry bushes and apple trees. The fence went along a run-off swale, where they'd dug a trench and installed more chain link below the rest because he wanted the top of the fence to be even and not dip down. With each storm that lower sections of chain-link caught rocks and other debris which in turn caught silt and over time filled the swale upflow from the fence. The farmer had had to dump rock below that fence to keep it from getting undermined by the vortex when water flowed over the de facto dam.
Looks like you are following in the steps of Tony Coote and Peter Andrews and the work they did to Mulloon Creek. However, you are keeping most of the water hidden which is better in an arid environment.
The water surge is never a problem if the gabion walls are made in the correct manner and located well. The destructive forces of the water are always in the center of the stream course and start having impact where the river bends, as it starts to undercut the banks. I am busy with a video on gabion groyns, which addresses this issue.
It is galvanised so it does not. It may eventually but by that stage the river should have vegetated and stabilised the area. I have seen gabions that are over 30 years old and still going strong. You can get plastic coated gabions for particularly corrosive environments, like the coast.
In my neck of the woods they call them either “perennial” (they flow throughout the year except in droughts) or “Non-perennial” (they flow when there is rain and for (often) quite a long while later, even (if the rain is good) throughout the year (unusual).
Just a note, grain size doesn't determine water holding capacity, If all the grains are spherical, and of similar size they will hold the same amount of water, no matter the size. Mixed grain sizes hold less as the small grains fill the spaces between the large grains and reduce the water holdng capacity, to the extreme where very fine clays will close up the voids completely.
If you have coarse sand it will hold more water as there will be more pore space between grains. The smaller the grain, the more compact the medium will be. River sediment is a mix of all sorts of media, some with lots of clay, others with gravel type media and others with silt/sands...
@@kenttahir.cooper5282 It depends on the sorting of the grains. The size is irrelevant. A box of ping pong balls has the exact same ratio of pore space as a box of soccer balls. A box of mixed soccer and ping pong balls will have less pore space.
@@stevesavage8784 Thais fine Steve, I have no problem disagreeing with you. You are never going to get the same size grains in any river, they will always be mixed and never be spherical. However a general larger and courser gravel will hold more water, I have seen this directly with my sand filter systems on our natural pool. The really finer grain materials hold less water, are compact and have less pore space. This is a direct observation... Courser material will also drain/infiltrate quicker to the clay or rock base of the river, while finer material with higher clay/silt content will run-off more before infiltrating, however will retain moisture for longer if there is not impermeable base to the system. Context is everything.
@@kenttahir.cooper5282 Physics and geometry have their own context. Take some measurements. Sand filters are washed and sorted sands, so they will hold maximum water, but fine sands or coarse sands will hold an identical amount. Sorting not grain size determines water holding capacity.
Absolutely spectacular video. I really appreciate seeing the footage intercut with actual high flow. Amazing how much silt is carried in the water. Really appreciate your understanding and sharing of all this knowledge. Thank you.
Thank you James
Be the Beaver! 🦫
Excellent work for ground water recharge 👌👌👌
Thank you.
The ability to gently pacify water sources, stabilize existing soil embankments, create water reservoirs, build soil deposits, begin wetland development, invigorate growth of biomass..... work with nature......all in the placement of rocks..... You are blessed.
Thank you... Hard consistent work and good design...
Love Your Idea is the most approachable and sustainable I have seen
Thank you...
Second video of yours that gets recommended to me in one day. You are doing great things!
Perfect strategy for Namibia with all its seasonal river systems...
Wonderful, thank you. I am going to do this on a small scale on land I just bought. Hello from Southern Oregon😊
Howzit... All the best with your project.
I think it was south central Oregon where we stopped to look at what looked like a series of groves of something like willow, wondering who would plant clusters of trees that way. We found out that the trees were accidental: the landowners had made catch-dams with rocks interwoven with green tree branches to help hold the structure together. Many branches from one tree species had sprouted after the very first rain, making the structures into living dams.
Excellent video. I am really impressed by the amount of work you have done. And to be able to work with such a huge flow of water, wow! We have two seasonal creeks on our property too -- I will walk them and think about gabions. And thanks also for telling us the size of your gabions as well as reporting the importance of protecting the embankments. This was a very interesting and useful video.
Thank you. Gabion work is heavy graft...
Great video. The scour below dams is best dealt with via steps where the lowest step is dug into the channel so there is no pour over vortex.
Kent I just discovered your tube and hope to hell you don't stop. Im looking to buy property around Robertson and develop check dams to increase the underground water. Please add more content !
Howzit... Thank you. I am working on more vids at the moment. Please follow us on Instagram, we also post short vids and info on that platform... instagram.com/p/C82DCj5i1sL/
fantastic to see that water disappearing into the ground, a really great illustration of how the water is being stored in the silt fields, just out of sight!
Thank you...
Thank you for live events... appreciated 🙏
USGS UA-cam channel has a video on very similar small rock dams on an Arizona ranch that has had a similar effect as your “sand” dams.
PS - parts of USA have benefited from the reintroduction of beavers into areas they have been eliminated from. Beaver dams have been very good at retaining water and preventing erosion
PS2 - Impressed your designs can survive those high river flows.
I once hiked through an area that a dozen years earlier had been bare soil bordering an erosion gully into which some beavers had been introduced. Within five years water was flowing year-round, slowing to a trickle in the late summer. Within another five the gully was shaded by trees that grew due to the improved water retention. By the time I hiked there, out of a five-mile section three and a half miles were just a series of beaver dams shaded by trees. The beaver dams were so effective at catching sediment that except for the middle channel the water was barely knee-deep and instead of a gully that was six to ten feet wide there were ponds between twenty and sixty feet wide. It was a fun hike also because fish had returned in abundance and there was no limit to how many fish could be caught for eating along the trail.
Wonderful, the most successful use of gabions I’ve seen that can handle the short yet catastrophically torrential floods of dry land areas, and sink the water for year round availability.
Very nice, and thank you for sharing! 👍
Thank you...
You aren’t an environmentalist or Stop oil person. You actually believe in conservation. Areas with less rainfall were always a problem, you are showing the way how plentiful of rain should be used: you are awesome.
Thank you...
@@kenttahir.cooper5282 Thank you. 🙏🏼
А я противоположного мнения... Уважаемий афтарчика видеосика слишком много бла-бла-бла и никакой конкретики и никакого действия... Но ето поправимо ... При первом же проекте, он может поработать у меня общим работником и понабратся практическим опитом ... Далее его видеосики станут весьма короче и весьма полезнее обществу ...
@@ГогоГого-э3юgo and get a life
Be the Beaver! 🗿🦫
Hi from Andalusia. Great to see what you have done. We have just started 2 years ago to do the same. Groete daar.
Thank you, all the best for your sand dam mission...
very interesting, thank you, hope more people come aware of this.
Lovely farm, great information. Wow that was a lot of water, really cool to see that those walls didn’t wash away with so much water. It’s ironic how so many people think they should fill in the wetlands to make way for more fields to grow in… then the water just end up washing away in rivers instead of infiltrating and filling up the aquifers. Awesome video.
Thank you
Nice one. Very good engineering. At 26,55 we see the production terraces, and the comments about not having the structures too high in order to not break the banks. Yes But But the big But. In a flood event it is possible to have a sluice or swale outlet to irrigate a field , a production terrace, or soak a flood plain. For example, (in rough figures) if 10 megaliters goes past your property, half a megaliter gets diverted onto a flood plain or production terrace gently,,,,then the sluice or swale is shut off. or it could re enter the creek system later downstream. There's another level of engineering available here, maybe your already doing it unseen in the video.
Sure, that can work, depending on the context of the river drainage line in relation to the terraces that will allow safe engineering. I was able to achieve this on another farm I lived on in the region 15 years ago but the setup was very different to this farm. The thing is that when you get these big flood rains there is so much water flowing off the slopes into the swales anyway and the production terraces get a huge soak. With rivers, often you can get more rain upstream so the river will pump down, even though there may not be that much rain locally, and that is when a diversion system will work. The sand dam then needs to be upstream from the swales or the terrace system, with a canal or pipe drifting off from the wall of the sand dam onto the terrace or swale system. Our context here does not allow for this, but it is possible in the right setup. If there is going to be a mega rainfall, then you can, close off the canal or pipe and open in smaller flooding events. There are so many possibilities with good design, it really takes good observation and then fine tuning after the system goes through a range of different events...
Great tour of your system #sanddam system!
Phenomenal video. Excellent narration and great footage. Loved the intercutting of the river at full flow with what it looks like "empty". Very educational, I never understood how the accumulation of silt directly feeds permanent springs.
It's also amazing to see-at the top of the system in the background around 17:30-the wall of earth, what, 3 meters high? Which perfectly demonstrates your point that the river will cut deep into the landscape when given the opportunity.
Thank you...
Brilliant idea
Howzit Tahir, awesome timing on your video,planning on doing the same by us,your place is looking fantastic dude, greetings from Kermit
Howzit Kermit, shot man. I am working on another river training vid, this time on gabion groins...
I don't understand why you don't have way more subscribers?
Thank you so much ❤
I so want to try this in a town on the chihuahua sierra. We have river that runs only when it rains but the banks are so high now that adding 1 meter dams to slow the water flow and retain water would be of great benefit as the area is facing drought and desertification.
That sounds like the perfect context for sand dams.
Excellent walk-through, and you can certainly see the results! I'm a big fan of building beaver dam analogs simply because I have more woody debris than rocks. Considering the amount of water you get coming through... rock is probably the better choice! Have you put gabions up at the very highest point on your property?
Great explanation of sand dam's. I would like to point out to other listeners less familiar that lifting the riverbed match's the trapped sand with your alluvial valley sand bottom so that your water field of trapped reserve flow is much broader than the stream it'self ( Aquifer) so that the effects are magnified as you have an invisible hidden dam lake that is still tight enough to allow enough resistance to allow a slow constant multi season gravity release of water back to the stream bed.
Exactly... Good description...
Super video. Well narrated from an informed and educated presenter. The volume of water during the flood events was breath taking. It leads me to ask how much of the upstream catchment area is actually your land? If it is all your land, then is it possible to catch more of the water where it falls (swales, leaky weirs etc) to prevent such volumes reaching the valley floor all at once? Best of luck with your future endeavours, as the earth needs people like you!
Thank you... Yes most of the catchment is on our farm, however it is far too steep and wild to do any form of earthworks on, thin rocky soils, etc... In desert environments, flood surges are standard as vegetation cover is not dense. The best you can do is to encourage the growth of perennial grasses to provide as much land cover as possible, using livestock impact where possible. But at the end of the day the flood surges are just something you have to design for wherever you possibly can. In more gentle landscapes swales, riplines, berms, diversions, pocket ponds and earth imprinting will most definitely make a huge difference, as they will not only slow, spread, sink water but encourage denser vegetation cover, which is really the ultimate way of retaining run-off.
I saw a good idea that build the weir with a v-shape ( low in the middle and high and the sides) causing the water to overflow in the middle and saving your banks
fascinating stuff! i can only imagine an aerial view! id love to see a comparison with a comparable area that hasnt been managed like your area
Howzit. I will be doing a new drone flyover vid in the next few weeks...
This is a great “how to” video explainer. This solution is popular in parts of Kenya. Tell me would you have a view between rock walls and concrete walls? I see concrete walls here probably aimed at water storage.
Thank you...The concrete walls are really old, probably going back to the 1940's when gabions were not around, so they used concrete to do the same thing.
Hi. Can you make a video from top to bottom? I mean, in this one we got from downstream to upstream, it will be good to see it the other way. Brilliant video as I mentioned in my earlier comment. I hope you increase the frequency of your videos 😊
Hi... Thank you, I am busy with 2 new videos on sub-soiling and river training using gabion groynes, which should be out within the next 2 weeks. Follow our instagram channel we have got up and running, we have more regular and simpler content there. However our aim is to put out 1 you tube vid a month once I get the editing side of things completely sorted... instagram.com/oudeberg.permaculture.farm/
I had a beer everytime he said sand dam and I'm wasted.
Yes you will see on the large sand dam that is exactly what we have done. On lower walls this scour process is not a problem. Anything over 50cm in height will need a mattress below the wall unless you are able to locate the sand dam wall on rock shelf that runs across the river...
I've been making leaky weirs/check dams out of logs across seasonal creeks on my property in the arid foothills of San Diego, California. Like your sand dams, the silt deposits behind them are really a feature, not something that needs to be constantly cleared out.
Absolutely Love your work. To confirm before the sand dams the springs did not run? what was the "equation" on 15 min 30 to build the step terracing structure ? I mean how did you get to the understanding of having 3-4 levels knowing it was enough ? Also when deciding to build a sand dam you need to excavate first to build it on hard rock?
Generally you should find a rock shelf across the river to build the sand dam. In this case I did not have that luxury, during the drought the reed bed that was there died off and once it started flooding again the river started to eat down, so I started responding by building a gabion wall across the river. The steps below that wall were a response to the undercutting of the river as it went over the wall. It took 4 layers of step to finally pacify the undercutting. The Spring has always been there, however the sand dams contribute huge amounts of water to the spring reserve and extend its flow further downstream and for longer. The longer the sand dams are in place, the more water is added to the reserve.
@@kenttahir.cooper5282 wonderful thank you .
Hi. Hydrology and geography of watershed must be considered before any erosion control/ dams are built. I absolutely agree type of vegetation must be integrated into whatever type of erosion/ water storage systems used. In your environment sand dams are great option- for me- not so much- 1 rock dams, log/rock rundowns, appropriate vegetation with careful management of tracks with rollovers, grazing, tarmac water runoff, and siting of dams.
For sure, observe and interact, the first principle of permaculture design and context is everything...
thanks
Haven't finished yet. Are you clearing the Silt (Rock Dust) and using in plant, crop, and/or pasture. This also allows you to capture new Silt and move it out of the river bed.
A filled Silt trap is no longer a Silt trap... it just runs past it in the future.
No. The river silt is not fertile, it is very sandy. My soils in the fields are extremely fertile loams. I manage soil fertility in place by integrated design between rotating livestock, legumes, subsoiling and effective guild formation. Moving around soils is not effective or possible on an agricultural scale.
A question, after the backside of the gambion gets filled with silt and forms a level field. Can, or will you, then add or extend the gabion higher allowing more silt to build up?
Hi... Good question... It all depends on how high your stream banks are. If they are really high from the silt field then you can add another row of gabions, as you do not want the river breaking its banks. You need to step them back so you do not create a sheer wall, which will cause high water impact at the base of the wall and it could undermine it. Only make the sand dam as high as your stream banks will allow...
@@kenttahir.cooper5282A follow on question. When you build your second stepped back row do you dig out the silt to the bottom level of the first row? Or perhaps do you only dig about half the height of your first gabion (25cm in your case where you use 50cm high gabions)
Yes, if the river bank system allows for it. I would do it in a step formation, so that the next row of gabions does not site on top of the current row but on the silt behind the initial wall. In that way you get a more solid wall and the water overflow is broken by the step below, reducing the impact of the water on the downside.
@@VisionCarrierDreamCatcher No just put it on the silt field and wire bind the front of the new gabion row to the back of the existing row.
is it possible,to re establish river,to have water,throught its length all year?
That is possible, it is dependent on the scale of a river. If it is a large river system it would need a total catchment system approach, with re-vegetation, swales, sand dams across the area. Smaller brooks and streams that source on a farm can be enhanced by the same holistic total approach. Streams that have dried up and used to be perennial have done so because there is too much run-off in the catchment system and not enough infiltration. Regenerative Water Harvesting Earthworks and total land cover will restore this pattern. In most cases it will need cooperation between land owners to achieve this.
I kept thinking about an "accidental" catch-dam I once saw in central Oregon: a farmer had been having trouble with deer getting into the fields and had put up a twelve-foot-high chain link fence around where he grew vegetables and had berry bushes and apple trees. The fence went along a run-off swale, where they'd dug a trench and installed more chain link below the rest because he wanted the top of the fence to be even and not dip down. With each storm that lower sections of chain-link caught rocks and other debris which in turn caught silt and over time filled the swale upflow from the fence. The farmer had had to dump rock below that fence to keep it from getting undermined by the vortex when water flowed over the de facto dam.
Looks like you are following in the steps of Tony Coote and Peter Andrews and the work they did to Mulloon Creek. However, you are keeping most of the water hidden which is better in an arid environment.
Yes, especially in very hot dry environments where evapouration is a huge factor, which leads to salinisation of surface water...
If you put a checker board of gabions on top of the silt field that would slow the flow down and reduce the destructive capacity of the water surge.
The water surge is never a problem if the gabion walls are made in the correct manner and located well. The destructive forces of the water are always in the center of the stream course and start having impact where the river bends, as it starts to undercut the banks. I am busy with a video on gabion groyns, which addresses this issue.
Where is this land please?
Its in South Africa, in a semi-desert called the Little Karoo...
@@kenttahir.cooper5282 thanks for your answer and by the way brilliant video
Does the gabion metal rust?
It is galvanised so it does not. It may eventually but by that stage the river should have vegetated and stabilised the area. I have seen gabions that are over 30 years old and still going strong. You can get plastic coated gabions for particularly corrosive environments, like the coast.
Preparations a through g were failures, but on the hole, i feel Preparation H is good.
In my neck of the woods they call them either “perennial” (they flow throughout the year except in droughts) or “Non-perennial” (they flow when there is rain and for (often) quite a long while later, even (if the rain is good) throughout the year (unusual).
You should see if you can get some volunteer help from Jean-Claude Sand Dam.
👍😎✌️
Just a note, grain size doesn't determine water holding capacity, If all the grains are spherical, and of similar size they will hold the same amount of water, no matter the size. Mixed grain sizes hold less as the small grains fill the spaces between the large grains and reduce the water holdng capacity, to the extreme where very fine clays will close up the voids completely.
If you have coarse sand it will hold more water as there will be more pore space between grains. The smaller the grain, the more compact the medium will be. River sediment is a mix of all sorts of media, some with lots of clay, others with gravel type media and others with silt/sands...
@@kenttahir.cooper5282 It depends on the sorting of the grains. The size is irrelevant. A box of ping pong balls has the exact same ratio of pore space as a box of soccer balls. A box of mixed soccer and ping pong balls will have less pore space.
@@stevesavage8784 Thais fine Steve, I have no problem disagreeing with you. You are never going to get the same size grains in any river, they will always be mixed and never be spherical. However a general larger and courser gravel will hold more water, I have seen this directly with my sand filter systems on our natural pool. The really finer grain materials hold less water, are compact and have less pore space. This is a direct observation... Courser material will also drain/infiltrate quicker to the clay or rock base of the river, while finer material with higher clay/silt content will run-off more before infiltrating, however will retain moisture for longer if there is not impermeable base to the system. Context is everything.
@@kenttahir.cooper5282 Physics and geometry have their own context. Take some measurements. Sand filters are washed and sorted sands, so they will hold maximum water, but fine sands or coarse sands will hold an identical amount. Sorting not grain size determines water holding capacity.
People should tame the wild as much as possible.we have plenty of water we just need to catch it
FYI- Sand dam project