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.
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 550 illustrations and photographs
Praise for Rainwater Harvesting for Drylands and Beyond, Volume 2
"Brad Lancaster has written the definitive how-to guide for harvesting rainwater. Much of this information has been near impossible to find, and we owe Brad a huge debt for assembling it so lucidly. These universal principles work not just in drylands, but in wetter climates too. This is by far the best resource for designing and building Earth-friendly, low-cost solutions to help us save our most precious resource, water.”
–Toby Hemenway, author of "Gaia’s Garden: A Guide to Home-Scale Permaculture”
"Everyone wants to ‘go green’ lately and, usually, the expression is followed by a plug for a new product. Brad offers a shovel instead, and directs you, literally, not figuratively, to your own back yard. We’ve tried some of the methods explained in this book, and they work. Even if you’re a lazy, mediocre, vagabond gardener, like we are, they still work. And if you don’t take the time to understand every technical detail so thoroughly outlined in this bible of rainwater– these methods still will work.”
–Shay Salomon and Nigel Valdez, author and photographer, "Little House on a Small Planet”
"Get out your shovels and dance in the rain! That is what Brad Lancaster’s second volume in his trilogy on rainwater harvesting, will make you want to do. This outstanding book provides an abundance of well-documented ideas and tools for sustainable living in your watershed. You don’t have to let wasteful, polluting large-scale water systems get you down—get out, get wet, and become a positive part of the hydrological cycle!”
–David A. Cleveland, U of California, Santa Barbara and Center for People, Food and Environment; co-author of "Food from Dryland Gardens”
Book specifications:
- ISBN 978-0-9772464-1-0
- LCCN 2007943019
- Published by Rainsource Press
- Paperback
- 8.5 X 11
- 448 pages
- Printed on 100% post-consumer recycled paper
- Categories: Rainwater harvesting, Water harvesting, Landscape design, Ecology, Sustainable development, Do-it-yourself technology, Sustainable stormwater management, Erosion control
