[HN Gopher] 'Green roads' are plowing ahead, buffering drought a...
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'Green roads' are plowing ahead, buffering drought and floods
Author : Brajeshwar
Score : 64 points
Date : 2023-12-15 14:21 UTC (8 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (e360.yale.edu)
(TXT) w3m dump (e360.yale.edu)
| seltzered_ wrote:
| "A Good Road Lies Easy on the Land... : Water-harvesting from low
| standard rural roads" might be a helpful book for those
| interested in this:
| https://allaboutwatersheds.org/library/general-library-holdi...
| WalterBright wrote:
| Sounds like something California could make excellent use of. Of
| course, they won't.
| hosh wrote:
| For more general design patterns for water management, see Brad
| Landcaster's book series, "Rainwater Harvesting for Drylands and
| Beyond".
|
| In the pictures in the article, the roads form berms, and the
| fields are basins. It doesn't just have to be roads -- walkways
| threading through a smaller scale can act as berms as well. The
| two volume book contains many other water harvesting structures.
|
| As a note, Andrew Millison has a youtube video about a river
| system that was developed in India over the course of centuries
| -- deliberately engineering a delta, with flood channels. They
| basically did what beavers have been doing in North America
| (slowing down and spreading out water) for ... longer than we
| humans have been around.
|
| These ideas are not new. They have been around for a long time.
| It's not that we found new ways to progress, but rather,
| rediscovering old methods that had been dropped in our rush for
| modernity.
| hinkley wrote:
| I don't know where he got the idea, but I've also seen videos
| by Mark Shepard where he uses roads as spillways. Instead of
| running water retention parallel to access, he will run it
| perpendicular. I was never quite clear how he prevents the
| overflow from exiting the property at maximum speed.
|
| If your water retention system reaches capacity, by definition
| you cannot hold onto it, but water flowing at speed is also an
| erosion risk. It can lead to earthworks failures, which are
| about as bad as landslides.
| hosh wrote:
| If he slowed down the water so that it has a chance to
| pecolate, it might help. But that only expands the capacity,
| and there may be days when that overflows.
|
| I think Lancaster talks about the perpendicular flow, and
| also talks about ways to mitigate that with curves (as well
| as discussion about erosion patterns when water exits a
| structure too quickly, which in turn reshapes the terrain,
| sometimes going into degenerative erosion patterns). On-
| contour swales (or trenches) are good examples, especially
| when there are multiple tiers with overflow to increase the
| distance the water has to travel as it snakes back and forth
| across the contour and descends down a slope. There are
| multiple chances to slow down water and let it try to
| infiltrate.
|
| In his latest edition, Landcaster talks about gambesons
| (retaining walls), which he used to advocate. But because of
| long-term erosion patterns, those can fail pretty quickly.
| scythe wrote:
| One phenomenon I heard about recently is that new developments
| plant smaller trees in order to reduce impacts on power lines.
| While this achieves the nominal objective, the smaller trees are
| generally ineffective for shade and general thermal management,
| provide limited support for squirrels and birds, and generally
| result in a much inferior aesthetic. According to some models
| (which are difficult to test), trees improve air quality; smaller
| trees probably have less effect. But the costs of trees accrue to
| the developer (who may be a city), while the benefits are diffuse
| and difficult to measure. Moral hazard, unintended consequences,
| call it what you will; you have to know about the problem to fix
| it.
|
| In this article, we hear:
|
| >"The biggest asset for [the county government] in this program
| is the reduction of maintenance costs," Maluki says. "It's a two-
| way benefit."
|
| What relates my first paragraph to this article is that I have
| read dozens of articles touting the benefits of trees in urban
| design and practically never see much attention paid to the
| forces in the decision process that keep trees out of cities.
| Yes, the emerald ash borer and [other story] played a role, but
| not all villains are so one-dimensionally bad.
|
| This article reads like another puff piece. Insofar as it engages
| with differing perspectives, they contacted an ecologist who
| doesn't want to build any roads, and he got two paragraphs. They
| didn't bother contacting anyone who builds roads and who has
| doubts about the project, though; their concerns are limited to
| about half of a sentence:
|
| >but road departments themselves have proved reluctant. "They
| don't want the costs associated with designing and implementing
| [them]," he says.
| CrazyStat wrote:
| A new subdivision went in across the major street from my
| neighborhood recently. The developer clear cut the forest, put
| in roads and cookie cutter houses, and then planted one small
| tree in front of each house. Many of the people who live there
| cross the busy main road to walk/jog/etc. in our older
| neighborhood, which has many more trees.
| dghlsakjg wrote:
| I walk my dog in a section of land that is slowly being
| converted from second (third?) growth forest to a
| neighborhood.
|
| They are doing the same thing. Cut everything down, reshape
| the land, build houses, plant a ceremonial sappling.
|
| Every time they expand the area that houses are built on, the
| amount of runoff increases massively. It's very clear that
| most of the water is coming only from the areas that have
| been "developed". The unmolested land is very capable of
| absorbing the amount of water that comes down. This year they
| had to completely redo their flood/runoff drainage area and
| ditch system after they cleared another bunch of land and
| filled it in with a bunch of sandy fill. Must have cost 6-7
| figures. No idea why they can't selectively harvest, and work
| with the existing topsoil.
| 11235813213455 wrote:
| we need to also think of the fact that the vast mojority of
| people move alone in a vehicle of 1500kg, this doesn't make sense
| for the environment, we need to go lighter and smaller
| brightball wrote:
| > we need to also think of the fact that the vast majority of
| people move alone in a vehicle of 1500kg
|
| ...safely, at sustainable speeds 10-15x faster than they would
| be otherwise capable while solving the last mile efficiencies
| at the same time.
|
| Increasing the lifetime and repair/upgrade-ability of those
| vehicles would probably do more for the environment than
| anything else.
| bobthepanda wrote:
| If the built environment didn't make them unsafe to use,
| e-bikes use a fraction of the battery and weight and cover
| most use cases, because most people are not doing things like
| moving a couch most of the time.
|
| The US has some of the most bonkers bike lanes I've ever
| seen; my favorite is a bike lane sandwiched between a main
| travel lane and a high-speed right-turn slip lane.
| monknomo wrote:
| those are bonkers and yet, when there is no bike lane, it's
| usually even worse
| lostlogin wrote:
| I'm not convinced it's worse - I often bike on the road
| with a cycle lane next to me.
|
| Bins, rubbish, man holes, street signs, uneven surfaces
| etc etc ruin bike lanes.
| dghlsakjg wrote:
| Safely?
|
| Motor vehicles are the most dangerous things we interact with
| on a daily basis.
|
| The US doesn't even factor in safety of non-occupants in
| safety requirements.
|
| Modern cars are safer than older cars, but they are still
| very dangerous.
| Ma8ee wrote:
| Modern cars are safer for the occupants, but more dangerous
| for everyone else, not only pedestrians and bicyclists, but
| also occupants of other vehicles.
| trothamel wrote:
| Bicycles are more dangerous, from what I can tell - about
| 10x the risk when travelling the same distance. (Due to the
| lack of safety equipment and the inability to keep up with
| the prevailing flow of traffic.)
| uoaei wrote:
| Cars are the ones hitting bicycles, I'm not really sure
| what you're trying to say here about what the statistics
| show.
| akira2501 wrote:
| Falls, in general, more commonly kill people than
| vehicles. It's not a perfect trade for safety. There's
| always factors that need to be actually measured.
| trothamel wrote:
| That's not true. According to:
|
| https://www.npr.org/sections/health-
| shots/2011/05/20/1364622...
|
| Most studies that look at it show that fault is about
| equal in bike/car collisions. Given that, it's worth
| looking to see what the outcome is - and for the same
| trip, you'll be safer in a car.
| NegativeLatency wrote:
| What you're seeing there is the failure of traffic
| engineers to design safe systems for people outside of a
| motor vehicle, because they're myopically focused on
| maximum throughput.
| akira2501 wrote:
| > Motor vehicles are the most dangerous things we interact
| with on a daily basis.
|
| Hardly. Self-inflicted injury leading to death is the #3
| leading cause of death in the US. Mostly, that's ladders
| and falls that kill you. Suicides are more common than car
| accident fatalities. _YOU_ are the most dangerous thing you
| interact with on a daily basis.
|
| The flu is more common. Emphysema is more common. So is
| Alzheimer's.
|
| Most car accidents are single vehicle accidents where the
| driver was drunk or impaired.
|
| Again, _you_ are dangerous to yourself. Which makes sense,
| you have to be around yourself all the time, so you _would_
| be the most likely cause of your own death.
|
| > The US doesn't even factor in safety of non-occupants in
| safety requirements.
|
| The vehicle can never be made safe for these circumstances.
| The road and pedestrian walkways _can_ be, though.
| limitedfrom wrote:
| > The vehicle can never be made safe for these
| circumstances.
|
| This is not true at all. Vehicles have been getting
| taller and heavier, which has led to worse outcomes for
| pedestrians and cyclists. We could be going the other
| direction, but instead we're continuing to make it worse
| without regulation.
|
| [1] https://www.iihs.org/news/detail/vehicles-with-
| higher-more-v... [2]
| https://www.iihs.org/news/detail/new-study-suggests-
| todays-s... [3] https://www.iihs.org/news/detail/higher-
| point-of-impact-make...
| drivebyadvice wrote:
| Ironically, it's regulation that made them like this.
| Obama-era emissions rules stipulated that trucks had to
| get a certain fuel economy, unless they were heavy duty
| trucks, which did not have the same requirements. The
| option was to either make all trucks less capable to meet
| requirements, or to start selling almost every truck as a
| heavy duty truck. Nobody would want to buy a truck that
| cost just as much or more while delivering less, so
| everybody got jacked up mega trucks instead.
| sokoloff wrote:
| > Most car accidents are single vehicle accidents where
| the driver was drunk or impaired.
|
| That seems unlikely to be true. Most _fatal_ car
| accidents are single vehicle, but I doubt that most car
| accidents are single vehicle. It wasn't immediately
| obvious how to search for reliable data there (since many
| single vehicle minor accidents would likely go unreported
| into a reliable /authoritative database).
|
| Among fatal crashes, I found data to state that the
| majority of single car fatals involved excessive speed or
| alcohol, but not data to say that single car alcohol-
| related fatals were a majority of fatal crashes or of
| overall fatalities. The data I did find suggested that
| around 1/3 of car crash fatalities were alcohol-related.
| tomohawk wrote:
| Alcohol is far more dangerous.
| ejb999 wrote:
| I think interacting with the standard American diet is many
| multiples more dangerous to the average person than getting
| into car.
| scythe wrote:
| One of the first road advocacy organizations in the United
| States was started by a coalition of farmers and bicyclists,
| before the car became common:
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Good_Roads_Movement
|
| >It started as a coalition between farmers' organizations
| groups and bicyclists' organizations, such as the League of
| American Wheelmen.
|
| Also:
|
| >the vast mojority of people move alone in a vehicle of 1500kg
|
| The total number of cars in the world is estimated at around
| 1.5 billion. The population is around 8 billion. In fact, the
| vast majority of people do _not_ own a car. This article
| focuses largely on road construction in less developed
| countries, such as Nepal.
| kwhitefoot wrote:
| Not in the places that this particular discussion is about.
| tomohawk wrote:
| After the destruction of the Marxist Derg regime in Ethiopia,
| this seems to finally offer some hope of restoring the ecology
| there.
|
| https://www.britannica.com/place/Ethiopia/Socialist-Ethiopia...
| TehShrike wrote:
| These sound like the sorts of techniques folks in the
| "permaculture" community talk about. My wife likes to watch/read
| stuff from that community.
|
| I'm glad the article linked to this PDF that gets more into the
| implementation details, I wouldn't mind going a bit deeper:
| https://documents1.worldbank.org/curated/en/1029516237428532...
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(page generated 2023-12-15 23:01 UTC)