Preparedness for when

thriftwizard

I have the same reaction to the bare hills and mountains in the UK as MTSTM had to poor bare Crete. At some deep level, I wince at seeing them treeless and bare, or smothererd under the s*dding conifers - hateful things.

Some farming friends have a big conifer plantation on their land, grown on land originally too boggy for their cattle; it's a wildlife desert. It feels eery to walk in; somehow empty and wrong to walk through trees where there's not a bird to be heard, no flittering or fluttering or scurrying through the undergrowth. In fact, there isn't any undergrowth, just a soft cushion of pine needles. It feels deeply weird. Smells nice, though.

Much of Southern Spain has the same barren landscape as Crete, which it shouldn't have. Last visit we went to the Sierra d'Espuna, where a local bigwig bought up the "useless" mountainsides 100 years ago and re-forested it with native trees, paying people to water them until they were established. It's beautiful, amazing and wonderful; it feels so different from the surrounding, mostly arid & dusty, countryside. Just to the east is an area of "badlands" where nothing will grow now, it became so degraded.

The story is one that recurs time & time again; they cut down the forests for financial gain. Then the soil washed away, and the rains no longer came... Saw it in Oklahoma, too; they're cutting down their deciduous woodlands for building lots, under the impression that it's somehow not proper (i.e. evergreen) forest & therefore has no value, and you can see the gullies at the edges of those lots where the soil is just washing away.

Oil is embedded much deeper into our everyday lives than most of us realise - most pharmaceuticals and nearly all fertilisers, herbicides & pesticides are manufactured using oil. Tractors run on it. Solar panels and nuclear power stations can't be made without it. And it's a finite resource, whatever the economists like to believe, and we've already had the low-hanging fruit...

Frugalsod

moneyistooshorttomention wrote: »

Quite possibly a valid point GreyQueen.

However - give the Government their due - and they have dealt with a major cause of this flooding. That being - the way so many people have paved over their front gardens these days:mad:. As I recall, there are at least regulations in place these days to ensure that (if people insist on doing so) then they have to use permeable type stuff to do so.

From what I remember - if I choose to replace (already existing) tarmac that previous owners put in my front garden - then I have to use that permeable type stuff (whether I want to or no).

I was not at all surprised that anyone who wants to pave over a garden now has to - but admit to being (pleasantly) surprised that this even applies to re-doing an existing job.

Irrelevant in my own case - as I'm mentally counting money until I have enough to rip it all up anyway and put it back into garden.

But that is something positive the Government has done about one major cause of the problem.

This is a minuscule solution to the real problem. As GQ mentioned deforestation is a problem and run off when we can only expect heavier and more torrential rains in future. Building on flood plains is also part of the governments policy. Councils are under pressure to build more homes and builders will prefer green field sites over brownfield because of the taxes levied on brownfield land.

Add in inadequate taxation of carbon and methane and you have a problem deferred to the point of extinction. We need to de carbonise the economy super fast and not in the centuries that our government are planning. It is not as if it is not technically possible. In fact it is very possible though will become even more expensive to do so if we leave it too long.

[Deleted User]

In the papers today, people were complaining about the failure of the flood defences, built after the 2005 floods, and blaming David Cameron.

As I recall, David Cameron didn't become PM, until 5 years after the 2005 floods, so how is he responsible, for the failure of flood defences, commissioned before he was PM :huh:

Frugalsod

Bedsit_Bob wrote: »

In the papers today, people were complaining about the failure of the flood defences, built after the 2005 floods, and blaming David Cameron.

As I recall, David Cameron didn't become PM, until 5 years after the 2005 floods, so how is he responsible, for the failure of flood defences, commissioned before he was PM :huh:

He cut the funding for flood defences so he can hardly avoid blame.

greenbee

princesstippytoes wrote: »

A weeping willow is a HUGE tree. Not something that most people could grow in their garden without the roots causing damage to pipes and foundations of theirs and their neighbours' homes.

however, if anyone does want willow, I can supply as many whips as you like in the spring as one of mine is due to be repollarded...

(I live on old watercress beds, next to watermeadows, which thankfully will be staying as watermeadows... although some of my neighbours' houses are built on land which historically was part of the watermeadows and flooded regularly upto and including the time that they were built)

moneyistooshorttomention

OOOOH....I might have taken you up on that offer if I lived near you Greenbee (ie of willow whips).

I've had a bit of a go at weaving since coming here and am sorta promising myself to have a bit more of a go at some point and maybe making a bit more somewhere along the line. I rather like those sort of natural type interwoven fencing things I see round here sometimes and found that even I (with my lack of craft skills) managed to make a sample size bit of it.

The area I'm living in now has huge amounts of craft work of various descriptions going on - all these "arty" people who have moved here and the wet/wild winters between them combine to there being a lot of "crafts" available. There's me without a scrap of doing anything "crafty".

Though I did actually make my first proper cheese the other day - started with the easiest recipe in the book for a sorta feta type-ish type cheese. It was quite nice. Must expand my repertoire and try some more types.

mardatha

Absolutely torrential rain battering my windows again today, this won't make life any easier for the flooded areas. Up here the terrain is a lot more natural not so man-made. (ok well its totally empty lol) But the flooded areas here seem to split into two sorts. Towns like Hawick, Selkirk and Gala are mill towns, surrounded by hills. Everything is crammed in beside the river and there's no wriggle room. And the other flooded areas were where two rivers converge or just very low lying flat areas. So up here, in this flood, I don't think slabbing gardens or putting up decking would have made any difference. The rain just came and came and came and its still bloody raining.
Also starting to feel sorry for the wildlife like owls, who cannot hunt in the wet, and even the wee sheepies are starting to look very sodden and miserable.

pineapple

GreyQueen wrote: »

Paved gardens are a PITA in urban areas but I don't think they are relevant to this set of catastropic floods; it's rain belting down on bare hills and mountains and pouring into valleys faster than water courses can take it. Once you have run-off on that scale, there is going to be beggar all difference whether you pave or don't pave; 4 feet + of water in the streets isn't going to be mitigated by having beds of petunias instead of pavement in your garden.

Spot on GQ.
We don't have paved over gardens in this Cumbrian locality and we have hardly any new build on flood plains. Plus trees won't grow anyway on some of the terrain. So for us, a lot of the solutions that are being trotted out are simplistic.
There is a limit to what can be done. I suspect that climate change is taking us into King Canute territory.

GreyQueen

Yes, the Sierra Nevada mountains of southern Spain are an appallingly-degraded landscape. I recall being driven from the airport up into the mountains and seeing the slopes above the road which were almond orchards; the soil between the trees was bare dirt and it was cloven with gullies every few feet, gullies up to a meter deep and many yards long, where the rainwater shot down the slopes.

I also saw the dying conifer plantations planted on the hills, which were suffering from drought and infestation by the pine processional caterpillars. I was there at the end of October a few years ago and the locals were horrified at how hot it was, totally abnormal of the time of year.

In the Garfagnana valley of Tuscany, I 'met' a wonderful wood of stately beeches growing on a steep hill. Fifty years prior, this had been a bare sheep pasture, having been logged out of the native forest long before. As was inevitable, it was degraded and becoming useless. But a wise person took the sheep away, fenced it off and just left it. The native woods regenerated quickly and it was an awe-inspiring place to walk.

About 30 years ago, a pal of mine had the opportunity to buy a conifer plantation off the forestry commission where it bordered his family farm. Initially, it was thinned out once, then twice, and it's his pet project (with his sons following behind him) to turn it into a proper wood. He allows nature to take its course and where a native tree like oak, or holly germinates beside pines, he takes the pines out to give it room to grow.

Over time, the wood is turning from monocultured pine into native mixed decidious forest, with all the attendant wildlife. He's passionate about it, a raving fan of oak, rants about bl00dy sycamores (terrible for nature, virtually sterile hosts, unlike oak) and is constantly working to make it.

When I walk in proper woodland, I feel an uplifting of spirit which I guess some people feel in cathedrals. Natural forest is as different from pine plantations as IKEYA furniture from Chippendale furniture. Once you've experienced proper woodland, pine plantations make you want to cry.

thriftwizard

The shaping of the stone arches in cathedrals is no accident; in the fractal nature of things, the tree shape is the best shape for spreading & supporting the weight of that massive roof. And it does, indeed, uplift the heart...

PS - Edited to add, I'm a spinner, who was born & raised on the moors surrounded by sheep (even inside our house at times) & I couldn't agree more that we need less sheep & more trees! The farmers are grumbling too; they're getting less per fleece than it costs to shear them.