Teaching permaculture for Volcanic areas

Hi,
where can I find resources/info about things to take into account in volcanic areas/islands within a PDC? (related to food production, building, etc.)
Best regards

Teaching folks how to add organic matter to their soils.  Organic matter could be compost, leaves, coffee grounds, etc.

Teaching how to use mulch to retain moisture.

Learning to grow mushrooms.

Learning about native plants and drought resistant plants.

Maybe teaching rain harvesting ...


Greening the dessert at Dead Sea Valley with Geoff Lawton:




Permaculture Garden survive volcanic eruption:

Anne Miller wrote:Teaching folks how to add organic matter to their soils.  Organic matter could be compost, leaves, coffee grounds, etc.

Teaching how to use mulch to retain moisture.

Learning to grow mushrooms.

Learning about native plants and drought resistant plants.

Maybe teaching rain harvesting ...

Hi Anne
thanks for suggesting those points.
In which way do you see these items as any different than for any other landscape type? In my opinion all these are part of the ordinary PDC curriculum, which I already include by default.
What I am looking for is specific tips/knowledge for volcanic areas.

Anne Miller wrote:
Greening the dessert at Dead Sea Valley with Geoff Lawton:

Permaculture Garden survive volcanic eruption:

Thanks for the pointer to these videos, especially the last one!

I think this will depend so much on other environmental factors that it would be hard to be universal about it. Tropical volcanic areas where soils form from rocks and ash quickly will be very distinct from arctic ones where soil formation is very slow. The styles of volcanism and volcanic products in a place like the Congo would be dramatically different from, say, Hawaiian or Icelandic volcanism.

In tropical volcanic arcs, soil formation is pretty rapid, and soil quality is generally pretty good (not quite as good as a fertile floodplain, but there are nutrients to break down from the volcanic deposits). But ash deposits can be frequent, and ash is pretty smothering and unfriendly to plants and crops, especially when it's thick. Acidic vog from passive degassing can also be a concern, and CO2 buildup in low lying pockets near passive venting areas can also cause tree kill zones. Basically, these areas can be very lush but have intermittent kills and dieback, so versatility would be a priority. Heavy ashfall also causes structural and roof collapses, especially in wet tropical areas with a lot of rainfall.

Volcanic soil in general is likely to be on the acidic side, but islands in tropical areas may also have carbonate sediments, so I'm not sure that would be so hard and fast. The soil details would thus also be pretty localized.

Oh, also: water supply. Rainwater catchment can be contaminated by tephra fall, and areas with excessive gas release can have unusual geothermal groundwater properties. It's not just sulfur (though that's the most immediately obvious to the human nose, and a safety concern). Spring water and pools may be extremely acidic with high dissolved metals. Some geothermal waters are CO2 rich, and this is both good and bad: nice naturally fizzy water sources (and even CO2 bottling for profit in some places!), but risk of CO2 buildup and sudden release, which can be deadly.

Easy geothermal energy, on the other hand, is a great benefit for a volcanic region. That's a larger community or state effort, though.

Antonio Scotti wrote:

Anne Miller wrote:Teaching folks how to add organic matter to their soils.  Organic matter could be compost, leaves, coffee grounds, etc.

Teaching how to use mulch to retain moisture.

Learning to grow mushrooms.

Learning about native plants and drought resistant plants.

Maybe teaching rain harvesting ...

Hi Anne
thanks for suggesting those points.
In which way do you see these items as any different than for any other landscape type? In my opinion all these are part of the ordinary PDC curriculum, which I already include by default.
What I am looking for is specific tips/knowledge for volcanic areas.

I have never taken a PDC.  From what I have read, what is taught is up to each individual teacher so subjects can vary.

I listed what I thought would be good to include for a PDC in a volcanic area.

I feel for a volcanic area, teaching folks what organic matter is will help them learn how to build soil.  From what I understand there is very little soil in volcanic areas.

Teaching folks how to mulch plants is very important, especially in volcanic area that are prone to drought.

Mushrooms have so many benefits, especially in soil building and repairing volcanic areas.

Learning what are native plants for your specific volcanic area.

Rain harvesting might be included in many PDC though teaching how to for your specific areas might not be.  What methods are used to store rainwater in arid climates might be different from how to store water where rainfall is plentiful.

Thank you Anne, I appreciate your explaining.

Syd Smith wrote:I think this will depend so much on other environmental factors that it would be hard to be universal about it. Tropical volcanic areas where soils form from rocks and ash quickly will be very distinct from arctic ones where soil formation is very slow. The styles of volcanism and volcanic products in a place like the Congo would be dramatically different from, say, Hawaiian or Icelandic volcanism.

Large parts of the North Island have volcanic soils or at least show the influence of past eruptions. Where I live there are tephra/ash deposits that show up in road cuts and quarry faces, and the clay component of our silt loams is partly the result of ash fall. Around Taupō there are layers of welded tuff and ignimbrite. Good luck getting anything to grow in that. The central plateau has huge expanses of deep pumice soils, which are somewhat fertile, with a goldilocks attribute of being free draining and still holding lots of plant-available water, but missing some essential minerals, which means if you want to graze livestock there you will have to supplement with elements like selenium and copper.

It's like a mosaic and the soil types can vary dramatically within a district. Just south of Auckland, which sprawls across a field of extinct "one-off" cinder cones, are the best market garden soils in the country. Gorgeous, deep red, crumbly, friable volcanic loam that grows just about anything you plant in it. But if you go to the northern fringe of the city it's a completely different story: kaolinite, a pale greyish clay derived from ash, sat underneath subtropical kauri forests for millenia and weathered to form something that's about as infertile as tropical laterite soils. One of my colleagues runs a food scrap composting project incorporating biochar and has completely transformed the soil in trial paddocks. She brought before and after samples to show off at our booth at the big agricultural field days in June and it was pretty amazing. One bucket was like brick and the other was dark, with crumb structure, worms, and that smell that says "I grow things."

Yes, New Zealand is especially extreme, and a great example of how there is really no universal volcanic agriculture scenario, at least for soil types. Most of your volcanoes erupt explosively and are more silicic on average, and some volcanic islands in subduction zones would at least have similar eruptive behavior. Others, though, not so much.