Finding the "keypoint"

I am having trouble locating the/a keypoint on my property. Any thoughts?

From what I remember from the PDC, you start walking up the slope. When you cease landing on your heel, and begin landing on the ball of your foot, you've reached the keypoint. Or have I missed what you meant?

Kris Arbanas wrote:I am having trouble locating the/a keypoint on my property. Any thoughts?

Hi Kris,

Great place! Your having trouble because your whole place is a natural water harvesting trough. The pond appears to be well sited and the keylines are all around it. What are you looking to do? Have you read Parcival Yeoman's books?

All Blessings,\Bill

I have read P.A. Yeomans books and others who use Yeomans concepts but all of the example maps they use make it easy to located the keypoint(s). With this contour map I don't think it is so obvious because the ridges/valleys aren't so nicely defined.

The two ponds and wetland I have at the bottom left of the rectangle is a nice water source but unfortunately it is at the low point of my property so will not be able to use gravity. My goal is to find the keypoint(s), and subsoil this fall before the rain comes. I want to soak the water in, and lay out my tree system on keyline because there is some erosion happening in the pasture.

It seems like you may have a bit of a keypoint in the upper right about 1/4 to 1/3 of the way in from that right corner, about five countour lines down. It's hard to explain in a post, but I could point at the area I'm thinking of pretty easily. That's about the best spot that jumps out to me though. Relatively high on the property, but it's just a thought that keyline may not be appropriate here, you might want to look at swales. You could just pick a contour line nice and high on the land with a fair bit of catchment and go from there, placing ponds and interconnecting overflows, and planting trees, etc. along the way. How big is the property?

I think I know where you mean. Is it where I have marked on the map?

The thing with that spot is, although it is a change in steepness, it seems to go from somewhat of a valley to somewhat of a ridge if you draw a straight line down. The keypoint from what I understand should be in a well defined valley. There seems to be so many valley/ridge changes down a straight line of the slope that it's hard to plot anything. Very frustrating.

Yup, that's roughly the spot I was talking about. I feel you on the frustration with this project. There really isn't anything here that screams "keyline me!", I just don't know if it's going to work there.

This webinar was helpful. This guy seems to just lay out a guideline that works for each area of the farm without using keypoints as a starting point.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_M2QjiELqHg

Wider spacing.

Those wider spacing pics make it a little easier to see what's going on. How 'bout a pond in that upper right quad near where the yellow contour line meets the road, you could do a 1% sloped swale from the upper left quad all the way across the property to feed the pond and increase the catchment for that pond. That would give you the water storage high on the land and then you could keyline plow from there using that initial swale as your "keyline-ish" starting point. It seems like that would get you your water storage and moisture evening across the landscape. Just throwing out ideas.

Dave Dahlsrud wrote: How 'bout a pond in that upper right quad near where the yellow contour line meets the road, you could do a 1% sloped swale from the upper left quad all the way across the property to feed the pond and increase the catchment for that pond.

I don't believe the water would be able to transverse the ridges nor the distance (1200ft+) to make it all the way to the top right, would it? Unfortunately the property was also ditched along the road so I can't capture any overland flow.

If you're staying on contour the ridges shouldn't really be an issue. I wouldn't imagine that the water you caught on the far left on the property would itself ever make it to the pond on the right, but the overall hydrating effect would allow for greater flow sort of pushing water from the middle of the land towards where the pond would be. Some gentle manipulation of the road with a rolling swale or even a culvert could divert a significant amount of flow from the roadway ditch into your catchment as well. In all reality just looking at a picture pales in comparison to actually walking the land and observing moisture patterns, erosion, and water flow though so this is all just theory. You'll have to get out there and just start messing with it. Let us know what you come up with though.

Yeah unfortunately I haven't been able to have any good observation during the wet season yet so trying to design without seeing it is tough. Kind of a catch 22 though because I want to design and plow before the rains come to capture it and get my trees in.

Seems you have several key points. Remember they are only in primary valleys, of which you have a few. If you can't find inflection points (your land does slope quite evenly) then just work down from your highest contour.

G'day,

I saw this map before when my colleague Georgi Pavlov (www.HumaDesign.org) shared it with me asking my opinion.

Its seems clear to me that this particular contour map is a classic case of where the methods of extracting/making contours from GoogleEarth/Maps just doesn't work...they are inherently unreliable — you are much better off either getting a survey done or using the available county/state/federal photogrammetry or Lidar based data where possible.

Regarding locating the Keypoint – I can save a bit of time here by pasting in a few extracts from the recently released 2. Geography chapter of the Regrarians eHandbook.

Keypoint/Keyline Described:



Keypoint/Keyline in 'E' Landscape



Keypoint Cross Section & Keyline Pattern



Thanks,

Darren J. Doherty

Darren J Doherty wrote:G'day,

I saw this map before when my colleague Georgi Pavlov (www.HumaDesign.org) shared it with me asking my opinion.

Its seems clear to me that this particular contour map is a classic case of where the methods of extracting/making contours from GoogleEarth/Maps just doesn't work...they are inherently unreliable — you are much better off either getting a survey done or using the available county/state/federal photogrammetry or Lidar based data where possible.

Regarding locating the Keypoint – I can save a bit of time here by pasting in a few extracts from the recently released 2. Geography chapter of the Regrarians eHandbook.


Thanks,

Darren J. Doherty

Hi Darren,

Georgi was very helpful considering we didn't have anything solid to work with. I have priced out a professional survey and it's not feasible unfortunately. Also being in Canada, I don't have the resources available to U.S. like county contour maps etc. I do have an excellent laser level though so looks like I will be doing a lot of walking!

I have read the Geography chapter and look forward to Water!

Thanks for the note Kris,

I said to Georgi when he sought my advice on that map —

'I'd love to see some photos of this landscape cos it had so many anomalies!'

Sorry for making the assumption that you were in the USA. I didn't look to see otherwise!

Give the 'making contour maps on the cheap' technique a go — the latest version of that process is listed on pp.134-135 of the Regrarians Handbook — 2.25 Level/GNSS Topographic/Feature Survey.

Thanks for supporting our book project too!

Cheers,

Darren J. Doherty

How would you site a house you want to keep extra dry (keep the water table well below it) but also feed gravity-fed water to?