Geoff Lawton's "A Tale of Two Neighbors" now LIVE!

Geoff shows how he and his neighbor approach the vegetation and grazing of their shared stream bank differently - even though they are both ecological practitioners. Geoff uses his system to bring useful deposits like course sand and organic matter to his property. He does this by allowing the banks to be covered with "weeds" and not allowing cattle to graze the banks. On the other side of the stream, cattle graze the banks, eroding them and they spray herbicide to get rid of the weeds so they can replant native vegetation.

There's no short version for this video, but you can see the FULL VERSION on Geoff's site. Simply sign in with your email address.

To be fair though, this time he's comparing apples and oranges. His system is on the inside curve of the meandering river, which is always an area of deposition. While his neigbour is on the outside curve, which is always an area of erosion. The land I looked after as a teenager was inside a huge curve which was slowly being eroded at the neck to form an oxbow lake and I had a good chance to watch the whole process for many years.

Here's a video that explains it a bit.

You know - I thought the same thing!

those oxbow lakes in the video Burra linked look like amazing places to place natural chinampa-style growing systems.

don't know if any of you have heard of Viktor Schauberger, but he actually designed a method to control erosion from outer banks.

http://www.rexresearch.com/schaub/schaub.htm

this is a really interesting doc on his work & modern applications: