Understanding: Landscape Hydrology
Posted: Tue Dec 28, 2010 9:43 pm
This is the third in the series written by Ian Sutton.
Water is life: LANDSCAPE HYDROLOGY
There is no more important function in the environment than the water cycle. While the food web is the medium in which chemical energy is distributed throughout the entire biota, water is the medium in which thermal energy is distributed throughout the entire biosphere.
To understand the miracle of water you need to know about the energy layers within its chemistry, that allow it to dissolve salts, conduct electricity and absorb huge amounts of thermal energy.
It’s the unique qualities of the polarised water molecules that create this incredible liquid energy system that not only fills and facilitates biological life; it also facilitates the global energy system that sustain biological life.
Matter is energy:
Remember I told you that everything is energy, that would mean matter is simply condensed energy. In fact it is, Quantum physics is now telling us that waves of energy collapse into photons of light, and then light condenses to form sub atomic particles.
Since atoms are made up of sub atomic particles (condensed light) and held together by photons of light, matter is energy, and also has the propensity to flow when there is an energy imbalance. We see this in the environment as wind in the atmosphere and currents in the ocean.
If thermal energy increases, this causes atoms to vibrate faster, creating an expansion force. If many atoms are all interacting together their combined expansion force creates a pressure wave. In both the liquid state and gaseous state atoms and molecules are free to move, enabling the medium to expand.
If there is a variation in the distribution of thermal energy, the volume of liquid or gas will develop high pressure zones and low pressure zones. This energy imbalance creates pressure variations, causing matter to flow from the area of high pressure to the area of low pressure.
This is what creates our whether and network of ocean currents, air and water flowing from an area of high pressure to an area of low pressure. These pressure systems create a network of feedback loops that distribute thermal energy more evenly throughout the biosphere.
A volume of warm rising air is a low pressure cell. As the air, heated from the landscape, expands and rises, a pocket of low air pressure develops at ground level. However, above the pressure cell, air is piling up and creating a pocket of high air pressure. To balance these pockets of uneven pressure, air can be exchanged with a neighbouring high pressure cell.
High pressure cells are volumes of cool air, contracting and sinking. The dense sinking air begins pilling up, creating a pocket of high air pressure at ground level. Above the pressure cell the falling air creates a pocket of low air pressure.
Both pressure cells are polarised.
Cool air will flow from the pocket of high air pressure, below the high pressure cell, to the pocket of low air pressure, below the low pressure cell. As the air moves between cells it absorbs heat from the warm surroundings, eventually expanding and rising through the low pressure cell.
Warm air will flow from the pocket of high air pressure, above the low pressure cell, to the pocket of low air pressure above the high pressure cell. Because the air is much colder in the upper troposphere, this flow of warm air cools, as the thermal energy is rapidly absorbed by the colder surroundings. As the air cools and becomes more dense, it eventually sinks back through the high pressure cell.
When two pressure cells connect, they create a feedback loop, transferring thermal energy from areas of high pressure (hot) to areas of low pressure (cold). It’s the pockets of uneven pressures within the atmosphere that create the flow of air, but it is the influence of the earth’s rotation that causes the huge air cells to rotate and mix.
The energy exchange between pressure cells creates a force of attraction. If conditions are suitable the cells will be drawn together.
If a low pressure system forms over a tropical ocean, the rising warm air is saturated with humidity being evaporated from the surface of the warm water. As the ocean water evaporates, the water molecules absorb a quick blast of thermal energy from their surroundings. This enables them to break free from their attraction to the other water molecules.
As water molecules evaporate from liquid to gas, they absorb thermal energy from their warm surroundings. Later when the molecules condense from gas back to liquid, that energy is then released and absorbed by the new colder surroundings.
As the water molecules are far more energetic than the other gas molecules in the atmosphere, this greatly increases the kinetic energy within the low pressure cell, increasing the wind velocity and turbulence. As the water molecules rise, cool and condense, the thermal energy they release give even more kinetic energy to the pressure cell.
Having moisture in the air flow vastly increases the efficiency in which pressure cells can re-distribute thermal energy.
If there is sufficient moisture in the air, clouds will form at the altitude where the water molecules begin condensing. If there are high amount of moisture in the air, dense, energetic and high velocity storm cells will develop.
The tropical and sub tropical zones with high sun intensity and warm oceans are where cyclones and hurricanes form large powerful low pressure cells.
Natural area restoration:
The major environmental catastrophe we are facing across the Australian continent is the destruction of our river systems and the loss of our ground water. The removal of the vegetation layers has destroyed the landscape functions, sending the entire system into meltdown. We need to re-establish the balance, but the lack of available water in many of these systems, prevent plants from being able to reverse the cycles alone.
Before we can re-establish the full diversity of vegetation we must first return the water. However, there are many repair plants that can be used to shade and insulate the landscape, while water systems are under re-construction.
If soils are bare, we must first develop a primary succession ground cover. Casting seed balls, (seeds coated in a clay and compost mix), and waiting for rain, will likely be the most effective way to achieve a good cover over a large area. Ensure you cast a mix of repair plants and other herbs and grasses, including annual, biannual and perennial herbs.
How degraded the soils are will determine how dominate the weed succession will need to be.
Cover the ground with as much vegetation as possible, remembering the rule that the plants with the largest green surface area, grows fastest under the local condition and takes up the least amount of space at ground level, will be the best repair plants for the job.
Once you have established a thick protective ground cover, your hard wooded perennials, propagated earlier, are ready for planting out as the primary succession canopy. These need to be repair plants as well, and whatever the locals have cursed as woody weeds will be perfect for the job.
Two of the best geneses of native woody weeds are Acacias and Casuarinas; both create a canopy quickly and fix nitrogen into the soil. In the more degraded areas, shrub forms will be more effective than trees. In a lot of degraded areas, these kinds of plants may well begin growing in thick stands naturally.
There is nothing more to it than that. If in any location, exotic weeds are all ready fulfilling the role of either the ground layer or the canopy layer, we leave them be. We focus our revegetation projects on areas that have little or no plant cover and develop layers of vegetation quickly, using specialised repair plants.
We revegetate the hill tops and upper slopes first, always with a focus on eroded flow lines, and then move down onto the flood plains and valleys. At no point do we remove a single plant. This will allow the plants to begin managing the landscape functions again, and in some less degraded areas may be all that is required.
All areas with existing vegetation layers are considered low priority and may require only rehydration. Some areas with severe degradation may not be possible to revegetate before the landscape hydrology is restored. These will likely be low lying areas that have become salt laden.
Restoring landscape hydrology:
So now, how do we return the water? It seems like a mighty feat, and one that may be too impossible to achieve. At least that’s what I believed before I met Peter Andrews.
There is a simple process of using manmade structures, placed in strategic locations within eroded river and stream channels. These blockages slow the flow of water and cause the channel to fill, creating steps of ponds running along its entire length.
Through a series of contour channels, water is re-distributed from the ponds, out across the slopes on the hills, and back into the old flow lines on the flood plain. If water courses are dry, then we are preparing them for when it rains.
This replicates the way plants distributed the water, and allows seepage into the ground from the hills and the high points on the flood plain. This creates a fresh water perched ground table that sits like a lens above the saltier ground water. Because the fresh water pressure is coming from the high points in the landscape, salts are relocated from the topsoil and leached down below the fresh water lens.
Due to the way plants distribute water, trapping sediment and building the flood plain system, the primary and secondary flow lines of the river are in fact sandy deposits running along the high points on the floodplain. During high flows the larger and heavier sand particles settle out first, depositing on the banks and the bottom of the river channels, while the lighter silt and clay particles get washed out and over the flood plain.
The entire river system works as a water sink, with the flow lines sitting above deep sandy deposits. These deep sandy channels crisscross the floodplain. and allow water to infiltrate quickly and flow laterally underground. They also increase the infiltration of water into the surrounding clay loams via lateral movement from below the ground. It’s through this sand network does the river system fill the floodplain with water.
Once the flood plain is full and the ground table in the hills are recharged, the network of springs releases water slowly from the landscape, trickle feeding the river system. If there are extended periods of dry whether the secondary flow lines may stop flowing, but the network of billabongs and wetlands are continued to be feed from the ground water flows.
Only during extended droughts would the primary flow line stop flowing, but because the flood plain is still full of water, the ground table continues to keep the, ponds and billabongs full.
As the bulk of the water is underground, it is safe from evaporation. Only the mirror of the ground table filling the low points in the floodplain, creates any surface area exposed to the sun. As long as the water in the ground remains available to plants, the vegetation cover will continue to thrive long into a dry period.
Even when there is no rain, but there is water in the landscape and a strong vegetation cover, the micro water cycle will still function. Evaporation from the ponds and wetlands, and transpiration from the plants create humidity, which rises up the slopes of the valley during the day and cools and condenses during the night. The micro water cycle re-distributes the water from the low ground to the high ground, enabling the soil moisture content in the hills to remain available to plants.
The moist air above the landscape then contracts as it cools creating a high pressure cell of dense sinking air. If this high pressure cell is large enough it can connect with a low pressure cell over the ocean, drawing moist air inland.
If this process creates sufficient moist air above the landscape, the low pressure system will be drawn inland, off the ocean, feeding on the trail of moist air, and bringing drought braking rain with it. Since the vegetation cover is able to remain during extended dry periods, it will moderate the temperature extremes and vastly increases the opportunity for rain.
We now have water in the ground and the primary succession of vegetation established. This is the end of our interference for bushland areas, allowing them to regenerate naturally. However, it’s just the beginning of our new land management systems for farmland areas.
We have developed vegetation layers to shad and insulate the soil, rebuild soil structure and stabilise erosion. We have re-hydrated the landscape and removed the erosive forces of water during flood events. We have relocated excessive salts from the top soil and re-established the natural landscape functions to distribute and process nutrients and excessive salts.
We have also repaired the micro-climate, providing the conditions necessary for the soil succession to move towards diversity and layering. This will increase energy flows to the plants and the plant succession will quickly move forward.
As one trophic layer becomes more disordered, it influences the layers above and below it to become more disorder. As energy flows between the trophic layers becomes less restricted, due to increasing disorder, the feedback loops becomes more efficient.
The repair plants succession will be quick and effective and in front of our eyes will we see the plant successions move forward. Reeds and grasses will thrive on the floodplain wetlands and water courses, while riparian zones will explode into life. Woodlands and forests will establish quickly on the hill and slops and increasing diversity will be appearing everywhere.
The re-establishment of the micro water cycle will draw moist air inland from the oceans, providing ideal conditions for more regular and less extreme rain events. Temperature fluctuations between day and night and summer and winter will become far less extreme. Both these climatic conditions will benefit soil biota and plant growth, driving the successions forward.
Of course there are limits to how much moisture we can return to any one location, so the result will be a patchwork of different plant community blanketing the landscape, and diversity will thrive. As taller and more layered plant communities establish, there influence will have even more beneficial effects on the climate.
We will have re-connected land, ocean and atmospheric feedback loops and in the process repaired the micro-climates across Australia. In the mad rush towards bio-diversity, the explosion of life will draw down on carbon dioxide levels in the atmosphere. We will have restored our landscape and climate and led the world by example!
Many of the processors driving climate change are related to the deforestation of the globe and the resulting disruption to the water cycle. The rising level of CO2 in the atmosphere must absorb more energy from the sun, but equally as important, it’s very existence increases density in the atmosphere. Both of these conditions create more available energy.
Our human impact has increased energy levels within the atmosphere, but at the same time disrupted the feedback loop system that distributes that energy more evenly. The result is more extreme climate conditions, but little understanding of how each micro-climate around the world will be affected.
If our human impact causes the great ocean currents to re-connect their feedback loop system, dramatic changes to the world’s micro-climates will occur. Areas like Europe and Britain may well be completely covered in ice, while areas like Africa and Australia become desert landscapes.
Written by
Ian Sutton
Water is life: LANDSCAPE HYDROLOGY
There is no more important function in the environment than the water cycle. While the food web is the medium in which chemical energy is distributed throughout the entire biota, water is the medium in which thermal energy is distributed throughout the entire biosphere.
To understand the miracle of water you need to know about the energy layers within its chemistry, that allow it to dissolve salts, conduct electricity and absorb huge amounts of thermal energy.
It’s the unique qualities of the polarised water molecules that create this incredible liquid energy system that not only fills and facilitates biological life; it also facilitates the global energy system that sustain biological life.
Matter is energy:
Remember I told you that everything is energy, that would mean matter is simply condensed energy. In fact it is, Quantum physics is now telling us that waves of energy collapse into photons of light, and then light condenses to form sub atomic particles.
Since atoms are made up of sub atomic particles (condensed light) and held together by photons of light, matter is energy, and also has the propensity to flow when there is an energy imbalance. We see this in the environment as wind in the atmosphere and currents in the ocean.
If thermal energy increases, this causes atoms to vibrate faster, creating an expansion force. If many atoms are all interacting together their combined expansion force creates a pressure wave. In both the liquid state and gaseous state atoms and molecules are free to move, enabling the medium to expand.
If there is a variation in the distribution of thermal energy, the volume of liquid or gas will develop high pressure zones and low pressure zones. This energy imbalance creates pressure variations, causing matter to flow from the area of high pressure to the area of low pressure.
This is what creates our whether and network of ocean currents, air and water flowing from an area of high pressure to an area of low pressure. These pressure systems create a network of feedback loops that distribute thermal energy more evenly throughout the biosphere.
A volume of warm rising air is a low pressure cell. As the air, heated from the landscape, expands and rises, a pocket of low air pressure develops at ground level. However, above the pressure cell, air is piling up and creating a pocket of high air pressure. To balance these pockets of uneven pressure, air can be exchanged with a neighbouring high pressure cell.
High pressure cells are volumes of cool air, contracting and sinking. The dense sinking air begins pilling up, creating a pocket of high air pressure at ground level. Above the pressure cell the falling air creates a pocket of low air pressure.
Both pressure cells are polarised.
Cool air will flow from the pocket of high air pressure, below the high pressure cell, to the pocket of low air pressure, below the low pressure cell. As the air moves between cells it absorbs heat from the warm surroundings, eventually expanding and rising through the low pressure cell.
Warm air will flow from the pocket of high air pressure, above the low pressure cell, to the pocket of low air pressure above the high pressure cell. Because the air is much colder in the upper troposphere, this flow of warm air cools, as the thermal energy is rapidly absorbed by the colder surroundings. As the air cools and becomes more dense, it eventually sinks back through the high pressure cell.
When two pressure cells connect, they create a feedback loop, transferring thermal energy from areas of high pressure (hot) to areas of low pressure (cold). It’s the pockets of uneven pressures within the atmosphere that create the flow of air, but it is the influence of the earth’s rotation that causes the huge air cells to rotate and mix.
The energy exchange between pressure cells creates a force of attraction. If conditions are suitable the cells will be drawn together.
If a low pressure system forms over a tropical ocean, the rising warm air is saturated with humidity being evaporated from the surface of the warm water. As the ocean water evaporates, the water molecules absorb a quick blast of thermal energy from their surroundings. This enables them to break free from their attraction to the other water molecules.
As water molecules evaporate from liquid to gas, they absorb thermal energy from their warm surroundings. Later when the molecules condense from gas back to liquid, that energy is then released and absorbed by the new colder surroundings.
As the water molecules are far more energetic than the other gas molecules in the atmosphere, this greatly increases the kinetic energy within the low pressure cell, increasing the wind velocity and turbulence. As the water molecules rise, cool and condense, the thermal energy they release give even more kinetic energy to the pressure cell.
Having moisture in the air flow vastly increases the efficiency in which pressure cells can re-distribute thermal energy.
If there is sufficient moisture in the air, clouds will form at the altitude where the water molecules begin condensing. If there are high amount of moisture in the air, dense, energetic and high velocity storm cells will develop.
The tropical and sub tropical zones with high sun intensity and warm oceans are where cyclones and hurricanes form large powerful low pressure cells.
Natural area restoration:
The major environmental catastrophe we are facing across the Australian continent is the destruction of our river systems and the loss of our ground water. The removal of the vegetation layers has destroyed the landscape functions, sending the entire system into meltdown. We need to re-establish the balance, but the lack of available water in many of these systems, prevent plants from being able to reverse the cycles alone.
Before we can re-establish the full diversity of vegetation we must first return the water. However, there are many repair plants that can be used to shade and insulate the landscape, while water systems are under re-construction.
If soils are bare, we must first develop a primary succession ground cover. Casting seed balls, (seeds coated in a clay and compost mix), and waiting for rain, will likely be the most effective way to achieve a good cover over a large area. Ensure you cast a mix of repair plants and other herbs and grasses, including annual, biannual and perennial herbs.
How degraded the soils are will determine how dominate the weed succession will need to be.
Cover the ground with as much vegetation as possible, remembering the rule that the plants with the largest green surface area, grows fastest under the local condition and takes up the least amount of space at ground level, will be the best repair plants for the job.
Once you have established a thick protective ground cover, your hard wooded perennials, propagated earlier, are ready for planting out as the primary succession canopy. These need to be repair plants as well, and whatever the locals have cursed as woody weeds will be perfect for the job.
Two of the best geneses of native woody weeds are Acacias and Casuarinas; both create a canopy quickly and fix nitrogen into the soil. In the more degraded areas, shrub forms will be more effective than trees. In a lot of degraded areas, these kinds of plants may well begin growing in thick stands naturally.
There is nothing more to it than that. If in any location, exotic weeds are all ready fulfilling the role of either the ground layer or the canopy layer, we leave them be. We focus our revegetation projects on areas that have little or no plant cover and develop layers of vegetation quickly, using specialised repair plants.
We revegetate the hill tops and upper slopes first, always with a focus on eroded flow lines, and then move down onto the flood plains and valleys. At no point do we remove a single plant. This will allow the plants to begin managing the landscape functions again, and in some less degraded areas may be all that is required.
All areas with existing vegetation layers are considered low priority and may require only rehydration. Some areas with severe degradation may not be possible to revegetate before the landscape hydrology is restored. These will likely be low lying areas that have become salt laden.
Restoring landscape hydrology:
So now, how do we return the water? It seems like a mighty feat, and one that may be too impossible to achieve. At least that’s what I believed before I met Peter Andrews.
There is a simple process of using manmade structures, placed in strategic locations within eroded river and stream channels. These blockages slow the flow of water and cause the channel to fill, creating steps of ponds running along its entire length.
Through a series of contour channels, water is re-distributed from the ponds, out across the slopes on the hills, and back into the old flow lines on the flood plain. If water courses are dry, then we are preparing them for when it rains.
This replicates the way plants distributed the water, and allows seepage into the ground from the hills and the high points on the flood plain. This creates a fresh water perched ground table that sits like a lens above the saltier ground water. Because the fresh water pressure is coming from the high points in the landscape, salts are relocated from the topsoil and leached down below the fresh water lens.
Due to the way plants distribute water, trapping sediment and building the flood plain system, the primary and secondary flow lines of the river are in fact sandy deposits running along the high points on the floodplain. During high flows the larger and heavier sand particles settle out first, depositing on the banks and the bottom of the river channels, while the lighter silt and clay particles get washed out and over the flood plain.
The entire river system works as a water sink, with the flow lines sitting above deep sandy deposits. These deep sandy channels crisscross the floodplain. and allow water to infiltrate quickly and flow laterally underground. They also increase the infiltration of water into the surrounding clay loams via lateral movement from below the ground. It’s through this sand network does the river system fill the floodplain with water.
Once the flood plain is full and the ground table in the hills are recharged, the network of springs releases water slowly from the landscape, trickle feeding the river system. If there are extended periods of dry whether the secondary flow lines may stop flowing, but the network of billabongs and wetlands are continued to be feed from the ground water flows.
Only during extended droughts would the primary flow line stop flowing, but because the flood plain is still full of water, the ground table continues to keep the, ponds and billabongs full.
As the bulk of the water is underground, it is safe from evaporation. Only the mirror of the ground table filling the low points in the floodplain, creates any surface area exposed to the sun. As long as the water in the ground remains available to plants, the vegetation cover will continue to thrive long into a dry period.
Even when there is no rain, but there is water in the landscape and a strong vegetation cover, the micro water cycle will still function. Evaporation from the ponds and wetlands, and transpiration from the plants create humidity, which rises up the slopes of the valley during the day and cools and condenses during the night. The micro water cycle re-distributes the water from the low ground to the high ground, enabling the soil moisture content in the hills to remain available to plants.
The moist air above the landscape then contracts as it cools creating a high pressure cell of dense sinking air. If this high pressure cell is large enough it can connect with a low pressure cell over the ocean, drawing moist air inland.
If this process creates sufficient moist air above the landscape, the low pressure system will be drawn inland, off the ocean, feeding on the trail of moist air, and bringing drought braking rain with it. Since the vegetation cover is able to remain during extended dry periods, it will moderate the temperature extremes and vastly increases the opportunity for rain.
We now have water in the ground and the primary succession of vegetation established. This is the end of our interference for bushland areas, allowing them to regenerate naturally. However, it’s just the beginning of our new land management systems for farmland areas.
We have developed vegetation layers to shad and insulate the soil, rebuild soil structure and stabilise erosion. We have re-hydrated the landscape and removed the erosive forces of water during flood events. We have relocated excessive salts from the top soil and re-established the natural landscape functions to distribute and process nutrients and excessive salts.
We have also repaired the micro-climate, providing the conditions necessary for the soil succession to move towards diversity and layering. This will increase energy flows to the plants and the plant succession will quickly move forward.
As one trophic layer becomes more disordered, it influences the layers above and below it to become more disorder. As energy flows between the trophic layers becomes less restricted, due to increasing disorder, the feedback loops becomes more efficient.
The repair plants succession will be quick and effective and in front of our eyes will we see the plant successions move forward. Reeds and grasses will thrive on the floodplain wetlands and water courses, while riparian zones will explode into life. Woodlands and forests will establish quickly on the hill and slops and increasing diversity will be appearing everywhere.
The re-establishment of the micro water cycle will draw moist air inland from the oceans, providing ideal conditions for more regular and less extreme rain events. Temperature fluctuations between day and night and summer and winter will become far less extreme. Both these climatic conditions will benefit soil biota and plant growth, driving the successions forward.
Of course there are limits to how much moisture we can return to any one location, so the result will be a patchwork of different plant community blanketing the landscape, and diversity will thrive. As taller and more layered plant communities establish, there influence will have even more beneficial effects on the climate.
We will have re-connected land, ocean and atmospheric feedback loops and in the process repaired the micro-climates across Australia. In the mad rush towards bio-diversity, the explosion of life will draw down on carbon dioxide levels in the atmosphere. We will have restored our landscape and climate and led the world by example!
Many of the processors driving climate change are related to the deforestation of the globe and the resulting disruption to the water cycle. The rising level of CO2 in the atmosphere must absorb more energy from the sun, but equally as important, it’s very existence increases density in the atmosphere. Both of these conditions create more available energy.
Our human impact has increased energy levels within the atmosphere, but at the same time disrupted the feedback loop system that distributes that energy more evenly. The result is more extreme climate conditions, but little understanding of how each micro-climate around the world will be affected.
If our human impact causes the great ocean currents to re-connect their feedback loop system, dramatic changes to the world’s micro-climates will occur. Areas like Europe and Britain may well be completely covered in ice, while areas like Africa and Australia become desert landscapes.
Written by
Ian Sutton