Friday, Sept. 12, 2008
1pm
Seminar room 4016,
Bren Hall
University of California Santa Barbara
Free
Contact Jami Nielsen(805)893-2968, nielsen@es.ucsb.edu
For a campus map http://www.tps.ucsb.edu/mapFlash.aspx#campus_map
Get out your shovels and dance in the rain! That is what Brad Lancaster’s second volume in his trilogy on Rainwater Harvesting will make you want to do.
Join Brad Lancaster for a talk and book signing, as he shares his experiences traveling the world learning about harvesting rainwater—with simple landforms and earthworks—in places like India, Peru, Mexico, Africa and the United States, where impoverished landscapes are turned into oases of life.
Harvesting rainwater was once a worldwide technology, but was replaced by pipes, canals, and sprinklers—inefficient and wasteful strategies that are running dry. In his newly published book Rainwater Harvesting for Drylands and Beyond:Vol 2, Water-Harvesting Earthworks, Brad Lancaster shares techniques for designing landscapes that passively harvest water using brilliant, low-tech, regenerative systems to hydrate the land and maximize the benefit that water brings to plants, animals and people.
Water has been identified as a global crisis in the making. Southern California has one of the most piped landscapes ever designed, relying on water from far away that may not be available in the future. Brad’s book encourages individuals and government agencies to redesign landscapes to live sustainably in their watersheds. Earthworks, using
shovels to large earth moving equipment, can be the foundation strategy for sustainable landscapes.
Brad Lancaster is a permaculture teacher, designer, consultant and co-founder of Desert Harvesters (DesertHarvesters.org). Brad has taught programs for the ECOSA Institute, Columbia University, University of Arizona, Prescott College, Audubon Expeditions, and many others. He has helped design integrated water harvesting and permaculture systems for homeowners and gardeners, including the Tucson Audubon Simpson Farm restoration site, the Milagro and Stone Curves co-housing projects.