Australia is diverting water from rivers to irrigate cotton. The rivers run dry. Huge issues. Thanks to iNat I happened on the river redgum. Endangered at home in Australia because the river is dry. Invasive here in South Africa. Such a strange world we live in.
We are sometimes forced to use seawater, which is bad for fynbos, but we don’t have a generous supply of fresh water. Firefighters say the landfill fires are the worst to fight - imagine - fueled by a below surface random supply of methane!
Thanks for the great explanation of the benefits of biochar and the dangers of buried wood.
Canada is experiencing increasing problems with ‘zombie fires’. These are holdover fires that burn deep into the ground fueled by long dead logs, peat moss, or other organic fuels. These fires can even overwinter. They slowly smolder unnoticed and spring back up in the summer.
We are tapping the solar energy produced in Australia through a grid system with Indonesia. Australians may have the capability of using electricity to pump fresh water inland. Australia is a place which can have massive floods in some years and big droughts in other years. Perhaps they can deepen the pool when the pool is completely dry. Water desalination facilities are big scale operations using current sources of electricity. The system uses synthetic materials such as the membrane that separates the salt from the water. Innovations in miniaturizing the desalination device, with solar or wind energy to move the freshwater inland or up a reservoir on top of hills may green the surrounding areas. However, it could be futile. Theory and practical are different. Nevertheless, I’m just saying it only. There are a few water extraction devices that can extract water from the air. Those are cool. I’m just thinking of one with glass surface condensation but it can cause fires too if it condenses the light rays onto a spot. My city is starting to separate food waste , recyclable plastics, electronics, metal waste from general waste, but not at a level that is significant. We learn online about earthworms and black soldier fly, other insects used to disintegrate the food waste. In natural systems, the composting process will involve fungi and bacteria. There is methane emitted by big composting heaps as what is happening at landfills. The methane can be tapped for industrial use or agriculture use. However, I do not have the knowledge on how it is done. As the gases accumulates into big bags or tanks, it can be dangerous if there is leakage or mishap.
Deepen the pool - we had people suggesting that when our dams were nearly empty. Civil engineers explained our dams have a clay seal - so ‘dig it deeper’ will destroy that seal.
Desalination is also on the Cape Town menu, but then the sludge (not just salt but all our pollution) is tipped back in the ocean, causing fresh problems to marine life.
Extracting water from the air. Is what our fynbos does using the Tablecloth (cloud on Table Mountain) It is why Cape Town was originally founded, its first name Camissa - place of sweet water. And why we have ‘nature’ reserves, protecting the mountain catchment which supplies water to urban populations and agricultural irrigation. Camissa - where I was born, and where my heart lives, in the shadow of our mountain rising from the sea
We have a pilot project to harvest methane from landfill. Teaching people to compost would be a far better solution. If only.
