Outstanding! Outside of waterfalls how did you add oxygen to the ponds? Do you have fish in your ponds and if you do did you add the fish? What type of fish? Did you add the water or allow rainfall to do so. Why do people use lining and why you choose not to? How did you keep the water in the ponds without the water seeping out from below?

@@shadeedmuhammad8107 I just got this. These are fantastic questions. I will answer them all in another comment, for now I just want you to know I have read your questions and appreciate your response.

@@shadeedmuhammad8107 Same, I'm really interested in the answers. I'm just commenting so I'll be notified when you reply :)

Same here. Would love to explore this on my farm.

@@shanshui.garden9012 i am also following for the answer

Thank you so much for sharing my work! I'm glad to hear you're developing an eye for permaculture solutions and spreading the word :-) Cheers!

Great idea

I'm in Rural Southern California...here looking for sustainable water solutions for 2.5 acres of raw Agricultural zoned land

@@enhancedsimplicity9708 Watch his videos and learn.

I wish people to wake up and heal the planet with ponds!!! I subscribe to your channel Ronnie! Have a great week!

Men, get the torches and pitchforks. We have a live one here.🦦🦦🦦 beaver

I am a honey bee :-) .

Same!! I have pictures of me as a kid building rock and stick dams across any creak I could find.

I think you are right. The more I learn about 'keystone species' the more I think what we need to do is reintroduce all these animals back into their natural habitat and just let them do their thing. They will heal the damaged environment by themselves. Humans should focus on managing the process like benevolent gardeners by finding ways to balance the needs of the natural ecosystem with the needs of humans. Humans also need to focus on doing what we can to keep non-native invasive species in check.

It's now or never .. would you happen to live in California... just asking because we need to speak up now ...✌️

Interesting. I never thought about the lack of beaver in Australia. Was there an analogous species that served the same purpose? Otherwise what are the origins of the old ponds?

@@amillison If I recall what Peter has said in various videos and social media posts it was vegetation that played a big part, and the slow building of natural steps from deposited materials. The introduction of livestock and land clearing, drainage etc lead to the landscape drying out. There are no beaver analogs, I guess termites and fungi do a job bringing down trees, as long as some have been left of course.

The Mulloon Institute was set up to demonstrate, research, and teach Peter Andrews’ methods applied to rehydrating landscapes. This video is a quick overview of the problems and solutions in the Australian landscape, it may be of interest Andrew. kzfaq.info/get/bejne/ociRhq9qmbSmk6s.html

The lack of beaver means the natural processes outlined by Chris are easily disturbed and take much longer to naturally rebuild. We are always interfering with the creeks and rivers here. I often think about introducing beaver to Australia, but I imagine they would upset the native animals too much, esp. platypus. Do beaver like eucalyptus? Australia is mostly like California. I'm not sure they could adapt. If we can get more land owners, private and Crown, to implement leaky weirs then, as you say, the water would run perennially, and more land would become arable.

willows get a bad wrap in our water ways but they do slow the water down

Yes we are and it's bloody great. I don't think I will ever see Beaver in North London but just knowing they are out there in increasing numbers is a joy in my heart.

That is true ‘regeneration’ 😍

That's so sad that they won't relocate them....what a waste! A gal friend of my from Colorado went to West Virginia to visit family....she told me it was INCREDIBLY beautiful and the people were so hospitable......I'm glad to hear of your efforts, may the Lord bless richly! Oh by the way, what's a perculation pit??

@@davidschmidt270 Thanks, it is really beautiful here. A percolation pit (it goes by lots of names, and I recommend Andrew's videos on the water revolution in India) is an unlined pond or horseshoe-shaped depression dug into a slope to catch water. You can combine it with keyline trenches (swales but with an incline to move water to the pit) to harvest more water. The goals are to slow down water moving horizontally across the ground (or stop it completely) and to get that water to seep down into the aquifer instead of running off and causing erosion. It's a way to recharge the local micro-aquifer and provide ground moisture for particular plants or garden beds, or it's a way to stabilize hillsides and minimize surface erosion. In our microclimate, we get between 50" to 70" of rainfall most years, pretty evenly spaced throughout the seasons. Our terrain is steep and the driveway would wash out constantly, with the ditches turning into canyons, if we didn't divert the runoff into a bunch of percolation pits spaced alongside the driveway. The pastures are significantly greener directly downslope of each percolation pit, too. This mimics the natural terrain feature of the Appalachian old growth forests, called "pit and mound" terrain. Old forest giants fall periodically and their root systems rip out of the ground, leaving a deep hole with a berm where the roots decompose. Digging a percolation pit is our way of recreating that natural defense against erosion, since we don't have old growth forests anymore.

Here’s to hoping they can make their way down to Georgia again, I’ve only seen two or three on the Chatahoochee my whole life

@@one_field thank you onefield !

See CT

Look around KZfaq to see videos on building Beaver Dam Analogs. BDA's have been used to great effect in arid regions. Easy to build and taking directly from the beaver's example. The hardest part, really, is just waiting for the rain to come so you can see the water back up and start ponding. I've built BDA's that were only a foot tall, using nothing but twigs and other forest debris. Once packed with mud, they hold back a thin sheet of water that spreads out over a hundred square feet and is several inches deep. The water will seep through, sure, but that's the point - slowing the flow so it can sink into the soil rather than causing erosion.

Just something to be cautious of...be extremely careful of using water retention methods on hillsides. If you get too much rainfall for your soil profile to hold, it can cause liquefaction and some mass wasting forms like slumping, mud flows and landslides. Mudflows are highly likely if your bedrock is impervious granite or basalt and your soil end up getting oversaturated. This is actually a frequent situation in my state, which suffers frequent landslide even in dense reserved forested hills, because our soil profile sits directly over hard impervious rock and our monsoons are getting much more precipitation due to global warming. Water retention structures are geomorphologicaly more safer for extremely gentle slopes or flat terrains. For hillsides it's safer to let the water run off quickly let the ground water recharge up from collecting in the valleys.

Sadly very few people care, thats the problem

Wow! Can I do a pond like that in Florida?

Huh. I've been told the only way to heal the planet is by banning all fossil fuels and voting Democrat.

Beavers were obliterated in North America due to fashion. I bet your great uncle was getting a pretty penny hunting down beavers. Throughout the 19th century, there was an unquenchable demand for beaver pelts to make fancy top hats for men. Of course, as the population of men exploded throughout North America, the demand for beaver pelts zoomed upwards. That's how 400 million beavers were driven down to 500,000 in about 100 years. The only thing that saved the beaver from complete extinction was the 1920s, when fashion changed suddenly and demand among men for top hats collapsed almost completely. Otherwise, it would've been bleak. Now that 500,000 population of beavers has slowly climbed up to 9 million today.

Me too :)

the sound track was a mis-step , though . common error among rookies having the background noise drown out the narration . that' s how we learn

See agrofloresra in Brasil.

me too!

The increased organic content of the soil throughout the watershed also increases soil porosity, helping absorb rainfall before it can runoff and accumulate into floods

Does California have laws against storing water from a natural stream? The water rights are owned by corporations?

@@ronniemcmaster8657 If it's true that's perverse

OMG that was funny!!! Sure, keep us updated!

The efficient use of water will be key in our overheated world, this is a very important issue that we all need to know and try to improve🙏

Yum.... nutrition

Very cool, thanks for sharing!

Easier in New Zealand for the water.

That’s crazy! The trees help shade the livestock and keep them healthier and from getting sun burnt!

You can find similar success example in China, it has been come true.

Look up Beaver Dam Analogs on KZfaq. Tons of videos on the things and how huge a difference they can make. You can build them in no time flat and they work just like the beavers said they'd work. Plus, it's just fun.

Start by chewing on smaller sticks before you try to take down a full size tree

Awesome!

Thank you so much! Glad it was helpful :)

I've thought of this a lot too. I know that the Greening The Desert project in Jordan had a bunch of 1x2 meter pits they dug and filled with spiky legume tree cuttings, and they were made in part to expedite the permeation of captured rainwater into the site's soil, but i remember the mulch pits purpose being specifically states as intending to create soil microbiology sinks where soil bacteria and fungi could get a jump start and spread to the soil of the rest of the site. So I have no doubt that post holes acting like numerous mini leaky cisterns would work to expedite water penetration, but I also have never seen it done with increased water harvesting and permeation as the primary goal.

Look into groundwater injection wells. They are a bit more industrious and usually fed from rooftop rainwater.

For poor drainage soils it may be better to simply improve the drainage by mixing in other agregates like sand and gravel to the poorly draining clay. However the #1 inpact on soil seepage will be water pressure so if you want better seepage then make a bigger pond. (More surface area increases the total area leaking into the ground, and more depth means faster seepage into the area covered by the pond) in my area the typical beaver pond is 8ft deep and a couple hundred feet along each axis. (Obviously this is affected by topography and beavers are only really trying to silence the sound of running water and ensure deep enough water to hide from predators in) but to me this is the size a pond should be if the goal is ecological benefits.

I so appreciate the kind feedback! Cheers!

...the beaver coppicing these trees results in bushier/denser regrowth - 1 trunk to many.

I think that oasian agriculture is the most advanced.

I live in north eastern kenya and all somalis need to learn this .

@@ifrahburalle6233 Definitely. 👏

I guess they're not trying to create perfectly waterproof ponds, not minding sinne of it leaking through?

Great question. At both of these sites, Seven Seeds and Cougar mtn, the vegetation is on the inside of the embankment, with no vegetation on the outside. If trees were on the outside of the embankment, then they would send their roots towards water and compromise the embankment by creating pathways for water to leak through. I still think if you consulted with a civil engineer it is not recommended for the structural integrity of the embankment to have trees on the inside, but you can see it working just fine for these ponds in this particular soil, moisture, and climate conditions.

Thanks!

@@amillison Doesn't it also depend on the species of tree? Geoff Lawton recommends willow for dam walls in cold climates.

@@myronplatte8354 yes, that makes sense. I believe that the species in these ponds are small growing willow shrubs. I wouldn't recommend anything that was actually going to get big

I'm so glad you think so, thanks for the comment!

Hopefully, since beaver hats are no longer in vogue.

you can use logs in the short term. native trees that grow near lakes and water will work in the long run

Beaver Dam Analogs.

@Subtle Nature we are in the Winnepesaukee River watershed. The property is sandwiched between Gunstock mountain and Lake Winnepesaukee. I'm pretty sure this stream comes off of the mountain somewhere and it ends up in one of the many small ponds before going into the Winnepesaukee River, then the Merrimack. It certainly picks up a lot of trash. I'm in there every other week taking the most random crap out of it. Found a (thankfully closed) bottle of chainsaw oil in there last week....

@Subtle Nature Right now there is a large stand of young poplar, plus some oaks, a few random pines and weirdly enough, apple trees. What do you recommend in terms of timeline for ripping out invasives/planting new natives? And do you have any suggestions on getting the damn bittersweet and rose roots to die? I don't want to use any herbicides, especially so close to the water, but they can grow back from even the tiniest part of the root. My technique so far has been to run around in the winter/spring with a pair of loppers, cutting any vine/thorn I see, and then pulling them out of the trees once they are dead and brittle in the fall. Keeps the tree damage to a minimum at least. But the stream runs along a 700' line, so it's taking a while, and I've been working on clearing out the thickets of crap.

Willows are amazing next to a moving water

In a dry climate with high evaporation, open water storage is not so good. Check out Brad Lancaster's "Rainwater Harvesting for Drylands and Beyond" book for all the answers

In those areas it's important to have trees to cover the water and reduce evaporation. I'm sure there are also plants that live on the water surface which will help as well.

@@tesha199 The dry winds in the area make that nearly impossible. They can't help the lake directly, but in the hills around it they can incorporate swales with fast growing, drought resistant trees. Keep planting young trees under the old ones, then cut down the large trees and chip them in place. Wash, rinse, repeat. They get heavy rains in that area a few times a year. They should be cashing in on it, instead of letting it sink into deep aquifers.

Planting trees that has no floor, and hopefully with time you will archive it. Look for scientists who will provide you with why and how no floor. I am indigenous Fijian..

Consider that development has also put a big "rain coat" over land that used to catch water and recharge aquifers. Adding recharge wells to each roof system (like Andrew highlight in a video on urban India) and making public parks and landscape design catch and hold water to serve this function would help immensely. Don't forget, Mead used to be and stay quite full. What's changed is how water interacts with the land... and there are a lot of people with demands on the supply...

😂 " The Permaculture Hunter"

​@@amillison "look at the swale, isn't she a beauty!" but seriously you have a gift for making the content easily digestible and fun. Thanks for doing what you do!

@@jakew1362 thanks Jake

Keep it clean

fish, frogs and other aquatic species eat mosquito larvae

Put some fish Native ones

therell always be mosquitos in still waters. keeping an actual ecosystem will keep their numbers down but the will still be there and go through boom and bust periods. theres a reason wetlands were cleared en masse across europe: malaria

Also with the intact forest ecosystem all around the farms for the ones in Oregon, there are lots of bats and bird predators of the mosquitos.

See my video "Mexico's Chinampas: Most Productive Agriculture Ever?"

Sorry,Ethiopia and Australia have started using this method and the difference can be visibly seen.