Permaculture Gone Wild

Final Reassessment of Project:
1) I'm having a little trouble finding a site; so, I may just make a design for my home and create an imaginary place on Galveston for this.
2) My original time frame has been expanded because its just me, and there is no pressure.
3) I will probably end up just emailing my design to the city council and and mayor of Galveston a week of two after I finish my design for the pdc I'm taking, and skip the scientist discussions. I'd prefer to skip the bureaucracy, anyhow- which leads me to #4
4) I think I may have found a more suitable place for my time and energies that is a bottom-up approach, instead of the top-down approach: finding a way to infect the minds of the people around me and those living there....hmmm........

Sounds like a good plan to me. and once you get that going you will have some experience to be able to show people what you can do. For homescale permaculture there are also resources such as gaias garden which may be helpful in your devious plot of infinite potential. good luck

Here is a brief sketch of what I am envision in my Galveston site design:
*edit: changed it from pdf to jpeg

Between the mangroves and cypress, there would be the bastard oleaster, sea buckthorn, sea berries, and sea almonds. The willows and cypresses would be planted on either side of the natural sand dune grass species; these species would be left untouched to appease conservationists.

The site I have chosen for Galveston is not the same as before; I still do not have any site with permission from the owner. This is for an educational purpose and no rights are being claimed to the site. The addresses has been removed to hide the location of the site. The Zone 5 area would probably be a Zone 4 if the government and native plant organizations did not handle the beach. To stay real, the shoreline idea cannot be part of this design.

These two sun sectors were found using the Sun Position Calculator. The top right corner of the building points North.

Here is a combined sector and zone map of the Galveston site. The Winter winds come from all directions except minimally in the West, Southwest, and Northwest.

I tried using Gimp and Preview to make this Galveston Zone and Sector Analysis image:

These ones I did on the Mac Pages application. What do you think of the image quality? I got the measurements off of Google Earth and tried to piece together a contour map.

Here I am just listing ideas of what could be placed in the system, and in another post, I will begin adding verbs to connect the nouns. This is a creativity technique that Toby Hemenway describes in his book Gaia's Garden.

Chickens
Goats
Flowers
Trees (canopy, understory)
Shrubs
Groundcover
Root crops
Mycelium and fungi
Vines
Legumes
Biogas Convertor and Pond
Stealth Pond
Mounds/hills
Swales + berms
Microswales
Rocks
Rainwater Catchment and storage

Any ideas on other elements that could be added to the list?

Some more elements:

Solar Panels
Solar dryer
Solar cooker
Rocket mass heaters
Double chamber cob oven
Garden Pool System (i.e. multifunction greenhouse/nursery)
Clothes line
Workshop

I played around with Google Earth and Street View a while and found out why the contour map I made and what the site looks like differentiated. If you go on Street View and watch the elevation readings, it can register the heights of trees, shrubs, bushes, and houses. Not everything from Street View and Aerial View corresponded with each other. I think Aerial View is trying to find the right elevations. So I have adjusted my map to rely more on visual assessment of the land through Street View and the governmental data on the site.

I started thinking about how ponds would work on Galveston, there is are two cool water table resources that I found online. There is an Arc GIS map for global users, and specifically, I found a U.S. Geological Survey Map that allows you to access data from active and inactive sites.

While I was looking for how to integrate native species into my design, I found this great database for native plants in the USA called the American Beauties Plant Database.

Sorry for taking so long. I have finally made a design for the site I chose; I hope this can be useful to some people. Please may you all tell me what you think of it; how things could be altered and changed or any questions.

The storm surge shore protection plan has been cancelled because I will need time to develop and work on my credentials.

Hi Dave

I am currently studying on coursera and there is a case study on Galveston Bay - https://psu.app.box.com/s/xzqp0xs5jw5duadx2mdv

Thought it might be of some use. If the linked doesn't work I will email it over to you

Welcome to permies, Matthew! Thank you so much for showing me this document; it is very cool! I am so glad other people have already started making ideas and planning . I really like their design- especially the restored marshlands, recreational piers, ecotourism hotels, and elevated highway and coastal marsh designs.

Mangrove has already showed up, possibly as a result of warming/weirding, so you can know which ones are already making it in part of the habitat. Huge mangrove snappers are being caught. Mangrove swamps clean water, but be aware they can also stink. People who love mangrove learn to apologize for and appreciate the stink. It means they are working, I guess. Mangroves build land and can protect against surges. Shrimp can also thrive in mangrove groves. I do not know if seagrasses would work, but they are great carbon sinks and can support much life. Some water species that were thought extinct in the Potomac River, a once horrifically polluted and degraded waterway, came back when water grasses were allowed to grow again. Grasses were also used in elaborate crafts by original peoples. This sounds like a great project. Blessings to you for such initiative, ambition, and energy.

Thank you Mary, and thank you for the knowledge you have shared with me; knowledge is power, and every bit counts!

I have lots of big ideas in my head, and I cannot wait to graduate high school in spring 2015 so I can begin putting plans into action with the help of professors from whichever college I choose to go to. Slightly immature, but my initiative, ambition, and energy primarily comes from the thought that I don't like how other people are doing some things, and I want to show that better can and will be done. Kinda rebellious, but yeah, I don't think I'm ever going to stop thinking like this and sure don't plan on stopping either. *Very much talk at the moment, but I'll finally be unleashed upon the world when I enter college and I can start putting my money (or other people's) where my mouth is *When I can start putting my plans into action just depends on when I'll have the time; no kidding, I can't wait to set things in motion. However, I understand that I must achieve certain prerequisites to be able to add authority/credentials to my thoughts, and I will do what is necessary to achieve my goals!