Turn water scarcity into water abundance! Rainwater Harvesting for Drylands and Beyond, Volume 1, 3rd Edition, is the best-selling, award-winning guide on how to conceptualize, design, and implement life-enhancing water-, sun-, wind-, and shade-harvesting systems for your home, landscape, and community. This book enables you to assess your on-site resources, gives you a diverse array of strategies to maximize their potential, and empowers you with guiding principles to create an integrated, multi-functional plan specific to your site and needs.
Praise for Rainwater Harvesting for Drylands and Beyond, Volume 1
"Brad Lancaster has published a revised, third edition of his authoritative book Rainwater Harvesting for Drylands and Beyond: Volume 1, Guiding Principles to Welcome Rain into Your Life and Landscape. Lancaster has decades of experience in planting rain in Tucson, Arizona. He began to counter poor waterscape management after meeting water farmer Zephaniah Phiri Maseko. This man’s wisdom, and his practice of long and thoughtful observation of land to understand how rain flows through it and shapes it, is at the core of Lancaster’s rainwater harvesting practice. Tucson receives more water from falling rain than its consumers use. But destruction of the region’s forest, and development of impermeable urban zones has led to water scarcity, as Lancaster explains in this Ted talk. His book addresses this problem. It tweaks Maseko’s principles of water infiltration to fit the needs of his Tucson home. This involves creating mulch-filled depressions in his garden where rainwater infiltrates, and where household greywater can be diverted. It also involves applying these practices in the public arena; for instance, diverting rainwater from streets to irrigate crop-bearing trees on public land. Rainwater Harvesting’s five chapters walk the reader through principles of rainwater infiltration, using Lancaster’s own projects as case studies. The book’s appendices, which have been further developed in this new, colour edition, offer another incredibly valuable resource. They describe, for instance, patterns of water and sediment flow and how to best utilize them; traditional Southwestern rainwater harvesting techniques; a list of plants and their water requirements, and information on the water-energy-carbon nexus and how domestic rainwater harvesting saves energy and money, while reducing CO2 emissions. In short, any household or community committed to living sustainably by conserving and recycling water should read this book.”—International Rainwater Harvesting Alliance (IRHA)
"Brad Lancaster has done it again. In revising his excellent book, he has given us a window into the world through the lens of water. Water connects all things. And Brad shows us water as a practical way of considering context and connection. From a world of water as commodity, he takes us to a world of water as moving, enriching exchanges, the stuff of life. A native friend got a job with his local water company, and rather than an engineering job, he saw it as a sacred trust. This is the shift that Brad leads us carefully through. Water is wealth and health—let’s treat it that way, and dance our way from scarcity to abundance.—Joel Glanzberg, author of the The Permaculture Mind; tracker; and teacher / designer of regenerative living systems; PatternMind.org
"In a time of escalating resource scarcity and global conflict, this essential book helps us regain control of our water by showing us how to enhance our water and energy supply with simple, fun, and effective strategies at home and beyond.”—Maude Barlow, author of Blue Covenant; Senior Advisor on Water to the President of the United Nations General Assembly
"Brad Lancaster clearly defines the differences between the path to scarcity and the path to abundance, both revolving around the wise use of water while avoiding the consequences of careless use. Throughout the book, alternatives are plainly described with illustrations that get to the point. I have worked in the field with Brad. He is unabashedly committed to the parallel causes of water and energy conservation. He asks incisive questions, searches for answers, tests solutions, documents findings, and happily shares his conclusions with all who care to listen. Clearly Mr. Lancaster is an agent for change, a true innovator, providing simple but powerful solutions to difficult questions facing society in both urban and rural situations.”—Bill Zeedyk, Zeedyk Ecological Consulting, LLC; co-author of Let the Water Do the Work
"Lancaster’s book on rainwater harvesting is fantastic and an abundant guidebook for a more sane approach to our most precious resource. I highly recommend it.”—Jason F. McLennan, CEO, International Living Future Institute
Book specifications:
- ISBN 978-0-9772464-0-3
- Published by Rainsource Press
- Paperback
- 8.5 X 11
- 288 pages
- Over 290 illustrations; index; bibliography; six appendices including patterns of water flow and erosion, water harvesting traditions, calculations, plant lists, worksheets, and resource lists.
- Foreword by Gary Paul Nabhan
- Printed on 50% post consumer recycled paper
- Categories: water harvesting, landscape design, ecology, sustainable strategies
- Release date: August 22, 2019
