https://reasonstobecheerful.world/beauty-of-lining-a-river-with-willow/
"In the Stone Age, Neolithic folks used willow branches and mud to build
roundhouses for their families. Jump forward several thousand years and
European farmers were fashioning panels of stitched willow, called hurdles, to
fence their farms or screen their gardens. Meanwhile, Native Americans
constructed frames of black willow stakes and branches for the sweat lodges
where their spirits were purified.
Today, dozens of species of willow are fitting into the toolkits of ecologists
and conservationists, who find these trees fine specimens for preventing the
decimation of the Ohio River Basin. By incorporating willow, their aim is to
minimize erosion while keeping its seven major tributaries as free of
pollutants as possible.
That basin, the largest riparian offshoot of the Mississippi, is one of its
most precarious, mainly as a result of unpredictable flows and decades of
pollution from the likes of power plant drainage and fertilizer runoff.
Riverbanks in the Cincinnati area and in Appalachian Ohio, experts say, need to
be stabilized not just to keep farmland and townships flood-free, but to keep
the waters — from the Muskingum to the Little Miami — flowing rhythmically and
consistently southeastward into the Mississippi.
And willows, conservationists and growers say, may be one of the most
sustainable, two-birds-one-stone fixes to getting that done."
Cheers,
*** Xanni ***
--
mailto:xanni@xanadu.net Andrew Pam
http://xanadu.com.au/ Chief Scientist, Xanadu
https://glasswings.com.au/ Partner, Glass Wings
https://sericyb.com.au/ Manager, Serious Cybernetics
