Crazy idea

Hello everyone,

I have this this idea that I would like to float out here for you all to chime in and tell me it's crazy (likely), stupid (possibly), or even catastrophic (maybe) - or that it just might work... ;-)

The scenario: We work in Tanzania, a country that is heavily affected by deforestation, soil degradation and erosion, gullies, sinking groundwater levels and the like. A friend of mine comes from a village where the river has dug down into the soil for more than 30m in the last decades. Massive deforestation in the whole region, leading to flash floods during the rainy season that kill people (mainly women washing clothes in the river) every year.

Of course there are possible solutions for situations like this, like check dams etc. Most of those will fail for two reasons: Lack of money, and lack of vision/willingness to invest money or time into the necessary work.

No my crazy idea/thought experiment: If I could find a running bamboo that has very specific climatic requirements (e.g. not being able to survive in a landscape with more than 2 months of dry season), and plant it down there in the eroded river bed, it might spread out over the whole gully with time, and into the rain water gullies and ravines leading into the river bed, and slow down or even reverse the whole erosion process.

Possible risks:
The bamboo very likely will take over the vegetation in the river bed and the adjacent gullies over time. That's why it is important to use a species that will not grow out of the gullies into the adjacent fields and take them over as well.

Possible benefits:
Reversed erosion wit a low-cost low teck method that can lead to raised ground water levels, a decrease in flash floods over time, and additional resources for the communities.

So now, what do you think? Please roast me, tell me everything that's wrong with the idea and what else could go wrong, lest I proceed with this idea and make a huge mess of a whole region...

Thanks in advance!

Martin Tlustos wrote: it is important to use a species that will not grow out of the gullies into the adjacent fields and take them over as well.

Do you have any particular species of bamboo in mind for the job?

I don't know anything about your part of the world nor do I know anything about bamboo.

What seems to me is that this would be for erosion control.

What I immediately thought of was vetiver.  Have you heard of it?  Will it grow where you need it?

Here are some threads on erosion control that mention vetiver:

https://permies.com/t/123097/permaculture-projects/Erosion-Control-Guild-Idea#987103

https://permies.com/t/133351/Erosion-Control-Plant#1044703

I hope others with more knowledge than I have will chime in.

I think bamboo is great for this sort of thing, but you want it specifically because it takes over- and it will definitely take over the adjacent fields. I don't know of any kind of barrier that would stop it. If I were you I would consider something that at least you can easily eliminate if you wanted to. In the meantime, encouraging people to plant trees along the areas that flood, in great volume, may be ant-scale work but might help absorb some of the water (I live in Brazil, in many of the urban areas that have massive flooding problems we are just starting to get back to planting trees along rivers and storm drainage channels to absorb as much as possible). Yes, slow going indeed, and the trees need care til they get established enough, but I think that plus some sort of ground cover would be better than having an entire river basin taken over by bamboo.... although, that said, if people can use the bamboo for other functions, maybe it could be kept under control. There is a grove where my uncle lives, that between people eating the shoots and cutting the trees, has been kept in the same area for quite a while. Right along a stream, as a matter of fact, a place that used to be a cattle wallow. But it needs diligent attention.