Are tropical earthworks worth it?

My grandfather recently passed away, and we deciding to maintain his land as a food forest in his honor.

I see a lot of content on rainwater harvesting and earthworks for permaculture. And im really interested on trying it out. The thing is that most of this content is for dryland, my grandpa's land is a slanted humid tropical forest.

I imagine that water harvesting here would cause mold issue and too much water retention could cause landslides.

What should i do?

Im going next sunday to survey the area

Chloe, welcome!
I live in a tropical place with a steep slope that is currently getting 500-year-levels of rainfall. We still do earthworks, but instead of harvesting water we're talking more about control of runoff to avoid gullies/erosion and largescale loss of good soils (which in tropical areas can be crucial, since the soil composition may not be what other places recognize as 'soil'. My dirt is clay, 100% heavy bright orange clay, and I can feed it as much organic matter as possible and it all disappears almost immediately.
Permaculture still offers a lot of good info in terms of maintaining and improving what you have- the idea of mulching and no-till comes out of permaculture and is getting big attention where I live, at least, because it offers solutions that are cheaper and more realistic right now when fertilizer costs a fortune and the weather is unpredictable.
I look forward to hearing more about the land and your efforts to memorialize your grandfather, which I think is a fabulous idea.

More information about the project will be helpful for sure.

Do you live somewhere it could flood?  Earthworks are good for altering the way water flows or stays on the land.  It might be worth looking around at local traditions of earthworks to see what and why is used locally.

Local knowledge trumps internet.

Tereza's point about runoff control is really the key thing in humid tropics. It's less about capturing water and more about slowing it down so it sinks rather than erodes. Swales on contour still make sense but you size them differently. Surveying first is exactly right, especially on a slope.

In tropical climates, with heavy seasonal rainfall, heavy earthworks can be augmented/replaced with vetiver grass hedges. Planted on contour these form a dense barrier that stabilises soil, builds biomass and fertility, prevents surface run-off.

Vetiver is non-invasive - it stays where you plant it, and doesn't seed. It has deep roots that are effective at stabilising even very steep slopes and are used as a replacement for hard engineering slope stabilising structures.



https://vetiver.org/vetiver-grass-technology/description/