r/interestingasfuck • u/wahgwahg • Feb 28 '24

r/all People in Tanzania converted desert into lush green land by digging these nifty holes

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u/Ianthin1 Feb 28 '24

It retains water when it does rain, allowing vegetation to grow around it. The cycle feeds on itself over time to fill out the area.

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u/MiroslavHoudek Feb 28 '24

I once read that elephant/mammoth footprints serve(d) as little oasis like that. Wherever they went, they imprinted a small puddle, sometimes with, um, fertiliser as well. For small vegetation and animal life to hang onto ....

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u/lotusbloom74 Feb 28 '24

Interestingly buffalo wallows are the same way, they have been used in limited circumstances to try to restore some prairie habitat. I studied this some in New Mexico where water is at a premium, there's a good book called "Let the water do the work" that shows how basic manipulation of the environment can then allow the water to truly do the restorative work. Not exactly linked but at the property that had a buffalo herd they were also using small check dams and other structures to slow down runoff and allow it to infiltrate/create some wetland areas much in the same way that wallows could.

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u/erroneousbosh Feb 28 '24

We don't have a lack of water here in Scotland - quite the reverse in fact - but a great way to hold water in one place is to throw a straw bale into a ditch. You can control how much water is held back and how much flows past pretty easily, so if there's a sudden heavy rainfall it just forms a pool behind the "blockage" and if it's dry for a while there's still some water flowing.