A. Lo

The Holistic Sustainability Semester (HSS) is coming this summer to Lost Valley Educational Center and Ecovillage just outside Eugene, Oregon. It includes a PDC (Permaculture Design Course) + EDE (Ecovilage Design Education)  + Intentional Community Immersion.

You can sign up for just the PDC part (use the same form as the HSS), or you can take the full HSS.

The Holistic Sustainability Semester features internationally renowned teachers in five spheres of sustainability — Personal, Social, Ecological, Economic, and Worldview. We weave experiential learning, indigenous teachings, and deep nature immersion practices into the HSS. Immerse yourself in our Ecovillage and our 87-acre campus of oak savanna, camas meadow, permaculture gardens, woodland streams, and regenerating forest.

Over each of the courses, students will integrate into the community, Meadowsong Ecovillage, and develop an understanding of the systems of dynamic governance and decision making (sociocracy) which form the basis of our community’s own self-governance.  Students will learn communication skills in a safe and nurturing environment that allow for new growth, expression, and deeper relationships.

Working with the land in our ongoing restoration projects, informed by indigenous practices and guidance, students will develop an understanding of how one can integrate into the ecosystem and the more-than-human world.  Permaculture-based food production, preservation, animal husbandry and integration provide a basis for students’ future work in the world as rewilders, community builders, farmers, and changemakers.

For a discount on the course, the discount code is dandelion. $50 for the PDC, $200 for the HSS

website: https://www.lostvalley.org/holistic-sustainability-semester-permaculture-eugene

There's a training course for those wanting to learn about how to manage water, how to 'slow it, sink it, spread it', how to build ponds and terraces, restore rivers, replenish aquifers etc. Its put on by Water Stories and Zach Weiss, a highly respected teacher in this field. Its an self-paced online course where you get to interact with mentors and also a community of water practitioners and students. There are three tracks. One is for those who want to become professionals. Theres a lot of jobs and need for water practitioners these days. Need outpaces supply. Water Stories trains you how to start taking on clients, and the final project is to get your first client. Another track is for those who want to steward their own land. And a third track is for those who want to become advocates for restoring water cycles. Here is the link to Water Stories course https://www.waterstories.com/?via=alpha .

The water cycle is multidimensional and affected by many things.
Here is a set of water principles to understands its many aspects https://climatewaterproject.substack.com/p/in-search-of-a-foundational-set-of

Slowing water in the landscape by using techniques like swales and improving soil organic content can get rivers to flow year round again, because water moves more slowly underground so it can come out during the dry months.
Allowing rivers to overflow into floodplains helps aquifers fill up.
See more at https://climatewaterproject.substack.com/p/on-rivers-floodplains-vegetation

How do we codify the many aspects of the water cycle, and how it impacts ecology and climate into one set of principles?
Here is one set of foundational water principles

https://climatewaterproject.substack.com/p/in-search-of-a-foundational-set-of

How permaculture can help restore the land-atmosphere carbon and water cycles https://youtu.be/5YP5-dtIZgo

Permaculture is an approach to land management by harmonizing with nature’s ecosystem. Climate permaculture is an accessible approach to climate adaptation by restoring natural connections and cycles between land and atmosphere.

The scaling of small scale restoration of soils and ecosystems can lessen extreme weather, and the impact of droughts, heatwaves, and floods.

We will discuss ways that you can tend and manage the land, help restore our wetlands, rivers and forests, to have a positive impact on our climate. We will look at how restoring the water on our land, and in our aquifers, has an impact on evapotranspiration, heat, and rain. We will see how harmonizing carbon and water cycles on the land, helps harmonize carbon and water cycles in the land-atmosphere system.

Sat Sept 17th 11am-1pm (Pacific Time) . To sign up https://www.eventbrite.com/e/climate-permaculture-tickets-413136320857?aff=ebdssbdestsearch

By guiding rainfall into landscape, and lessening runoff to ocean, California can rehydrate itself, and in so doing lessen wildfires https://climatewaterproject.substack.com/p/rehydrating-california-to-prevent#details

Ananda Fitzsimmons, author of "Hydrate the earth" talks about how we can decolonize our relationship to nature and water