Flood Mitigation & Riparian Restoration
Rescue Earth System
Developing the knowledge and practical experience required to advance regenerative land and water management techniques, including but not limited to permaculture techniques for soil hydration and natural sequence farming, and rural landscape management techniques aimed at restoring natural water cycles that allow the land to flourish despite drought conditions.
Flood Mitigation & Riparian Restoration
Help to build 10 leaky check dams yourself or pay for them to be built in your name.
Personal Target: 10 Leaky Check Dams per participant
Initiative Global Target: 10 billion Leaky Check Dams built globally
Ultimate Global Goal: 100 billion Leaky Check Dams built globally
Natural flood mitigation involves implementing measures to temporarily store excess water in the landscape, either in the river or in the flood plain. One way this can be achieved is by building Leaky Check Dam Systems (LCDS) to slow water flow.
Leaky Check Dam Systems are small leaky barriers constructed across a swale, drainage ditch, erosion gully, or waterway to counteract erosion and downstream flooding by reducing water flow velocity. Only natural materials are used.
Leaky Check Dam Systems are also ‘called’ / and are similar to: Natural Infrastructure in Dryland Streams (NIDS), beaver dams, one-rock dams, check dams, log dams, leaky weirs, earthen berms, and gabions.
Using LCDS for Riparian Restoration
The area surrounding the leaky check dams have many benefits including better water quality for life behind the barrier, the prevention of soil erosion, more available nutrients for wildlife, the stabilisation of river banks, becoming a spawning ground for aquatic life, a rooting habitat, a place of nesting birds, an areas of growth for microbes, algae and fungi, efficient temporary storage of water in floods and a slow release of water into surrounding area. There are also many other benefits to the local ecology.
Using LCDS to Repair Gully Erosion
Leaky Check Dams are a low-cost and low-risk erosion control method that that is found throughout the world. Arresting and reversing gully erosion requires resting the area from grazing animals and taking steps to rebuild and re-vegetate gullies. Leaky Check Dams are one of the most simple and cost-efficient methods to help slow water flow and start rebuilding gully floors.
How can I make a difference?
You can choose any one or more of the interventions listed below and your contribution will make a massive difference to riparian ecosystems and to the levels of flooding in your bioregion. The knock-on effects are substantial.
N.B. The standardised financial contribution ERIx10 fee is 100 x the minimum wage rate in your country.
Join a local or a bioregional project and help them to develop Leaky Check Dam Systems on a whole landscape scale
The large scale implementation of Leaky Check Dam Systems is project based. All projects include project managers that are suitably qualified in hydrology, ecosystem restoration and earthworks to make sure that the Leaky Check Dam Systems are safely built for the best outcome. You can join a project as a volunteer yourself or pay the standardised financial contribution ERIx10 fee towards the cost of materials and the cost of hiring earth moving equipment, etc.
The installation of thousands of rock detention structures in the Turkey Pen Watershed, of the Chiricahua Mountains in SE Arizona, provided a 30-year case study to consider low-tech and low-cost Natural Infrastructure in dryland watersheds. The USGS systematic study, through observation and experiment, offers verifiable data that documents their efficacy as a Nature-based Solution, that can provide climate adaptation and mitigation benefits here in the Chiricahua Mountains and beyond.
Jeffrey Adams, founder of TerraSophia LLC, and Neil Bertrando, from RT Permaculture, present on the innovative practices of Low Tech Erosion Control (LTEC); With their extensive experience and background, they will guide you through the revolutionary effects of LTEC on watershed restoration, illustrating its crucial role in creating sustainable and resilient landscapes.
