Permaculture in Damaged Lands: Degradation and Restoration in New Mexico
Community Projects, Conservation, Courses/Workshops, Deforestation, Demonstration Sites, Eco-Villages, Education Centres, Energy Systems, Gabions, Irrigation, Land, People Systems, Processing & Food Preservation, Regional Water Cycle, Rehabilitation, Society, Soil Conservation, Soil Erosion & Contamination, Storm Water, Swales, Village Development, Waste Water, Water Contaminaton & Loss, Water Harvesting — by Dan Smith January 21, 2012
A certain coal-strewn road in Madrid, New Mexico
— the remnants of a now defunct railway.
Alternately barren and spectacular, the southwest United States has piqued the imagination of Americans and people across the world for generations. The site of gold rushes, Native American homelands, and a culture of lawlessness that has yet to fade completely, much of the land was degraded and destroyed long before Hollywood discovered how to cash in on retelling stories from its checkered past. Films may glorify the breadth and scope of the iconic terrain, but the essence and character of the Southwest ecology has been drastically altered; it little resembles what it once was.
Comments (6)Dispatch from the Jordan Valley Permaculture Project (aka ‘Greening the Desert – the Sequel’) – April 2011
Aid Projects, Community Projects, Demonstration Sites, Education Centres, Urban Projects — by Dan Smith May 4, 2011
The Jordan Valley Permaculture Project (aka ‘Greening the Desert – the Sequel’)
Here at the Jordan Valley Permaculture Project in Jawasari, we’re hard at work building the main facilities and enhancing the fertility of the site while we’re at it. Those who had the chance to see the system last summer may have had some pangs of fear looking at some of the fruit trees, nearly prostrate beneath the intense yearly roasts the Jordan valley experiences in last months of summer — last summer being particularly severe. But today, the system is strong and growing. Acacias, Prosopis, Tipuana tipu other hardy nitrogen fixers have shot up, and the formerly-moribund fruit trees are twice their size, growing healthily in the shade of the pioneers. Apart from one sickly palm, not a single fruit tree was lost, and we even have our first yield of fruit!
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