In my last post, I talked about the problem of wildfires and drought in the context of the recent wildfires in Los Angeles. A big part of the problem is neglecting vegetation management and one solution is to do more thinning and prescribed burning to cut back on the brush that fuels and spreads a fire. But this only the start. In the long term we will need to restore the water cycle to put the brakes on drought.

I have just started to explore the work of scientists and practitioners who are developing and implementing techniques to restore what is called the “small” water cycle. Water cycles and recycles itself from the oceans to the upper atmosphere and all around the planet in complex ways that we call “weather.” Driven by sunlight and the oceans, the macro water cycles are out of our hands, but there are many levels of water cycles, and the small water cycles that begin in the watersheds where we live are quite amenable to our interventions. Indeed, our negative interventions are responsible for many of the problems we experience with water now.

In California, we have drained wetlands and channeled water into concrete ditches and irrigation pipes to deliver it for our uses in agriculture and urban areas. Water in open ditches and reservoirs evaporates quickly into the atmosphere under sunny skies. Low clouds and rain are less likely to form because clouds and rain need nucleation sites for vapor to condense and form droplets. Trees and other vegetation provide those nucleation sites by emitting volatile organic compounds like terpenes. Gaseous water molecules stick to these aerosols where they can combine and form a droplet. One droplet becomes many and then it rains.

Trees make rain. Deforestation dries out the landscape. The coastal forests have another role as well - they catch ocean fog and condense it, dripping water into the soil. Soil water translates into vegetation moisture. When soils stay damp all summer, trees and brush have a higher moisture content and are less likely to burn. East of the mountains, in the deserts, if wetlands are restored and water can sink underground, it stays in the soil during the dry season, cooling the earth. When the easterly Santa Ana winds form, they will be weaker, cooler, and more moist as they blow to the west over Los Angeles.

I have a lot to learn about all of this, but here is one source I will be checking out:

Climate Water Project

How to restore the water cycle, and how that helps with hydrating the earth and soil, replenishing groundwater, restore rains in drought areas, lessen flooding, and slow down climate change.

By Alpha Lo

Here is a wonderful example of the kinds of projects that visionaries are taking on to restore the small water cycles:

Similar kinds of projects are trying to mimic the natural role of beavers. The US Forest Service and other land managing agencies are constructing what they call Beaver Dam Analogs by pounding wickets into a stream and weaving branches through the wickets to make a leaky weir - not exactly a dam, because water flows through it, but a structure to slow, spread, and sink water into the soil.

This works, but it is a lot of effort to take on when the beavers could do it for free. Beavers are amazing water engineers that have shaped the hydrology of the northern hemisphere, yet much of the story of the settlement of the West is the story of beaver eradication - first for the value of their fur and then to remove what settlers saw as an impediment to their farming operations and development plans.

Some groups are organizing now to bring back beavers as much as we can, and to help farmers and landowners learn to live with them. Project Beaver is a wonderful group here in Oregon that does this work.

Sinking water into soil is the first step, but keeping it there depends on carbon-rich soil organic matter. Water drains easily through sandy, mineral soil. According to the NRCS, every 1% increase in organic matter retains as much as 25,000 gallons of available soil water per acre. Each pound of soil organic matter (SOM) can hold up to 18 to 20 pounds of water.

Biochar is an outstanding way to add carbon to soil and the highly porous biochar carbon is especially good at holding on to water.

Part of vegetation management for fire in Los Angeles and elsewhere should be converting those fuels to biochar in conservation burn piles or in simple kilns like the Ring of Fire Kiln. The impact of biochar goes beyond the fuel removal and the soil benefits. It also contributes to long term fire resilience by increasing soil moisture.

I have been monitoring a site near me where we turned about 50 burn piles into biochar two years ago. The site is an oak savannah that is now scattered with biochar patches of different sizes.

We had lots of rain here in December and very little rain so far in January and the ground is drying out quickly. I went out with my soil moisture meter a couple of days ago to see if there was any difference between the soil under the biochar patches and soil with no biochar. Here are some pictures that show the places where I measured, followed by the meter reading at that spot. I tried to measure patches with biochar next to some adjacent spots with no biochar and either bare soil or soil with vegetation. This was not a super accurate sampling method, but the results are consistent.

Here is a table of all of the measurements. They consistently show that soil with biochar has more moisture.

These results are encouraging me to do more measurements to see if the biochar soil patches continue to hold more moisture throughout the seasons. The biochar research literature shows that biochar generally holds moisture in soil, and I have noticed that potted plants with biochar don’t dry out as fast (this is an experiment that anyone can try).

We humans have messed up nature’s infrastructure that has provided us with water and vegetation for livable climate. We broke it and we need to put it back. But we have allies to help. We can bring back the beavers and we can bring back good fire and put it to work across the landscape to make biochar on site and leave it there to hold water in the soil. We can learn and do better. Let’s do this.

Please, if you want to learn more about practical biochar tips and tricks for growing your own food, or you are interested in stewardship biochar for restoring natural ecosystems and biodiversity, check out some of my links below:

The Biochar Handbook by Kelpie Wilson

My Practical Biochar Course on Regenerative Living

Order your Ring of Fire Biochar Kiln: RingofFire.earth

Check out my YouTube channel: www.youtube.com/@KelpieWilson