Upcoming month’s Regenerative Water Alliance events.
Past months recordings of events
Forests and Water (readings and videos)
Calendar of water events around the world
1. UPCOMING MONTH’S REGENERATIVE WATER ALLIANCE EVENTS
Forests and the Water Cycle (RWA) Oct 6th Thu, 9am -10:30am (Pacific Time)
We will have a roundtable discussion on how forests impact the water cycle through rainfall capture, humidity increase, evapotranspiration, bio-precipitation, groundwater replenishment, cloud creation, and wind breaks. Topics of discussion will also include how deforestration in Amazon affects rain, how deforestration in Pakistan affected floods, and what we can do about these situations.
Sieger Burger will give a short talk on forests and the water cycle. Sieger Burger is a geo-hyrdrologist-turned-landscape-restorer from the Netherlands, and is based in Kampala Uganda, where he is exploring the multiple interactions between soil, water, vegetation and climate. He writes a blog about food, soil and water (you have option to turn on translation to English on blog) .
Below in this Regenerative Water newsletter are various readings and viewings about forests and water
Zoom Call : https://us02web.zoom.us/j/4387884267?pwd=Qk1Ob0RIbjhEQzBCcWpyazFXVG1QUT09
WATERSHED WISDOM COUNCIL Oct 19th 4-5:30pm (Pacific Time)
We will discuss various actions a local watershed council can do from storytelling, permacultural actions, fire prevention, flood prevention, helping restore the small water cycle, and groundwater replenishment.
Same zoom call in as above.
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EVENT RECORDINGS FROM PAST MONTH
Here is a recording from last months RWA session on land hydration and fire prevention :
Here is a recording from last month’s Watershed Wisdom Council where Elizabeth Dougherty shared about how to tell water stories of our neighborhood
Here is the recording from last month’s Climate Permaculture workshop: Part I
and Part II
FORESTS AND THE WATER CYCLE (READINGS AND VIDEOS)
Here are readings and video about this month’s Forests and Water topic for the RWA session on Oct 6th.
Rob de Laet, who runs the World Climate School, and is working actively to save the rainforest, wrote this essay for this months RWA session on forests and the water cycle:
“Life's DNA is mostly a combination of sunlight, water, oxygen and CO2 with a sprinkling of other elements. Together they defy the laws of gravity and entropy in forming all kinds of life forms, that temporarily live and die as individuals but continue as species throughout the generations and evolve into smarter and smarter forms of cooperation between a myriad of species. Especially unperturbed rain forests, evolved over tens of millions of years are spaces where countless species interact in a brilliant web of interdependent life. Life in the forest foremost grows in and from the forest soils, that allow trees to grow and interact with that sunlight, air and water to store energy in the forms of sugars to be released at different times and places to sustain all life forms, such as new leaves, flowers and fruits, ants eggs or the energy for the flight of a hummingbird and at the top of the trophic cascades the mighty predators like the archetypal jaguar.
A PLANET'S WATERY AND AIRY SKIN
An undisturbed biodiverse rainforest forms the height of life's evolution where all species have something to give to strengthen the web of life's resilience, beauty and indeed intelligence. The metabolism of a rainforest is like that of a human body, only in balance if all these individuals work together in a concert to create the conditions that favor life to thrive. Forests and especially rainforests interact with air and water to create micro climates that protect that life. Disruption in the way humanity is inflicting right now, disturbs that metabolism and the tissues that make up these planetary organs. A humid forest atmosphere that creates its own rain through evapotranspiration, makes clouds and electrifies the skies, that emits small biological particles, called BVOCs to communicate between the forest and the atmosphere to protect it from too much sunlight and heat can be seen as the planet's skin. The interaction between forests, water and the atmosphere has been named the biotic pump, an interaction that keeps the continents moist with a cycle of rain and evaporation, which through recondensation at cloud level actually exports latent heat into space in amounts that are not recognized by the climate models and hence the importance of especially tropical rainforests for the energy balance of the planet is still not understood.
PLANETARY ORGAN FAILURE
Like all living systems, forests can repair themselves quickly unless they pass a certain tipping point where the damage is too large and a self-sustained feedback loop of dieback becomes exponential, such as what is now happening on the east side of the Amazon Rainforest which will destroy this Australia sized crucial planetary organ if not intervened with. The disruption of the planet's metabolism, the hydrocycle, the production of oxygen and other nutrient cycles will have a huge global effect. In the case of the Amazon Rainforest the dieback is expected to happen within decades, drying out a whole continent, collapsing food production, the availability of water and the generation of hydro electricity, finishing off the economies and mega cities of South America, adding enough CO2 to the atmosphere and destroying so much of the transpiration organs of the planet that the planet will warm up sufficiently to race us pass the Paris goals, making large parts of the Earth uninhabitable.
INTERVENTION
Averting the dieback of the Amazon Rainforest is therefore an absolute top priority in the fight against climate change. On the positive side we see the regrowth of secondary rain forest can restore 80% of its biological and hydrological function within 20 years if given a chance and the soils have not been leached out too much. On the negative side it is unlikely that human societies will have the clarity of mind and the will power to intervene at the scale needed to avert the dieback. Muddled thinking, making things too complicated, too much talk and too little action and finance, far too much focused on the day to day happenings of our life will likely result in passing the threshold of irreversible and accelerated dieback. While we should be concerned with establishing the long term conditions for life to thrive many generations from now, we are more and more on balance doing the opposite despite all the good intentions expressed every day by world leaders. Or to quote O J Wilson: “The real problem of humanity is the following: We have Paleolithic emotions, medieval institutions and godlike technology. And it is terrifically dangerous, and it is now approaching a point of crisis overall.”
RADICAL TURN AROUND
We are probably technically able to avert the dieback of the Amazon Rainforest on time with the plans I have developed based on the science of the biotic pump. But the likelihood that those plans will get any traction within the limited time frame we have, is minimal. Apart from averting World War III and the collapse of the global financial-economic system (which we are both sliding towards), the collapse of the Amazon Rainforest is by far the largest danger we face for the future of humanity. These three existential challenges outrank by a magnitude the dangers of transitioning out of fossil fuels too slow.
Here is a recent article that roughly tells the story I have been telling for about 3.5 years now. How close is the Amazon tipping point? Forest loss in the east changes the equation”
Here is an excerpt discussing forests and rain from “Hydrate the earth” by RWA’s Ananda Fitzsimmons
“Water vapour and clouds are needed to make rain. In order for clouds to begin to rain, it takes what is called precipitation nuclei to « seed » them and form droplets heavy enough to fall. There are three things that can serve as precipitation to seed clouds. One is ice crystals. Another is salt, which is why it rains a lot over oceans. The third option and the most important over land far away from the coasts, is a kind of bacteria which is found in the water vapour of tree transpiration. Areas which are covered in forest get more precipitation. The transpiration of trees is critical to regulating rainfall inland.
It is common in tropical rainforests to get daily rainfalls. Because tree roots go deep, rainfall can penetrate into the earth. Water is stored right to the depth of the roots. Other plants keep the humidity from evaporating and moisten the air. In a rainforest, one droplet of water may circulate between the earth and the atmosphere many times in a very rapid cycle. Each time it cycles, it brings cooling both on its way up and again on its way down.”
From a scientific paper “Feedbacks between deforestation, climate, and hydrology
in the Southwestern Amazon: implications for the provision of ecosystem services”
Here is a TED talk by hydroclimatologist Antonio Nobre on the Amazon forest and rain.
Here is a talk by hydroclimatologist Francina Domingues on how Amazonian deforestration increases rain, which then affects rain patterns in the Amazon basin.
Here is an excerpt from a scientific paper by Leticia S. Lima et al
“Large-scale deforestation triggers complex non-linear interactions between the atmosphere and biosphere, which may impair such important ecosystem services. This is the case for the Southwestern Amazon, where three important river basins (Jurua, Purus, and Madeira) are undergoing significant land-use changes. Here, we investigate the potential impacts of deforestation throughout the Amazon on the seasonal and annual water balances of these river basins using coupled climatic and
hydrologic models under several deforestation scenarios. Simulations without climate response to deforestation show an increase in river discharge proportional to the area deforested in each basin, whereas those with climate response produce progressive reductions in mean annual precipitation over all three basins.”
Lima, L.S., Coe, M.T., Soares Filho, B.S. et al. Feedbacks between deforestation, climate, and hydrology in the Southwestern Amazon: implications for the provision of ecosystem services. Landscape Ecol 29, 261–274 (2014). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10980-013-9962-1
(you can read paper by typing in doi number into sci-hub.ru)
CALENDAR OF OTHER WATER EVENTS AROUND THE WORLD
Water Conference Oct 13-16th Germany. The physics, chemistry and biology of water waterconf.org
Permaculture Water Summit Oct 13-15 Online hosted by Andrew Millison and Oregon State Uni. permaculturesummit.online
Climate Landscapes conference October 18-19, 2022. On-line. “Working with plants, soils and water to cool the climate and rehydrate Earth's landscapes” climate-landscapes.org/
Open Future Forum Oct 18-20. Online. On Oct 20th will be a session on soil and water which the Regenerative Water Alliance will be part of. openfuturecoalition.org/forum2022
Global Earth Repair Summit Oct 21-24 . Online. globalearthrepairfoundation.org
Localizing California Waters Nov 7-10. Yosemite, California https://localizingcaliforniawaters.org
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This RWA newsletter has a format for showcasing the projects, events, courses, initiatives, updates, etc. of all our members, along with updates as the Alliance grows. We invite you to share and showcase your work!
Newsletters will go out the first week of each month with submissions for contributions of content due by the 23rd of the previous month.
You can send your contributions for the following categories to alplo@yahoo.com
Here are the following formats for the content we invite you to contribute:
Events
Title, 1-2 sentence description, Date, Time, Location, Hosted by, Link for more information
Courses
Title, 1-2 sentence description, Date, Time, Location, Hosted by, Link for more information
Call to Action
Title of Action, 1-2 sentence description, direct call to participate/method to engage, link or contact to follow up
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