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Biologic Design
Wetland Ecosystem Services
whole site water reticulation, wastewater purification, resource production & habitat creation
Water is the driving force of all nature(Leonardo da Vinci)
Freshwater is only around 3% of all water on the earth - with very little of this in circulation
Freshwater Storages
• Ice and glaciers 75%
• Groundwater: deeper than 800m 13.5%
• Groundwater: less than 800m deep 11.0%
• Lakes 0.3%
• Soils 0.06%
• Atmosphere 0.035%
• Rivers 0.03%
Percentage of water in storages (including seawater)
• Ocean 93.8
• Glaciers and permanent snow 1.986
• Groundwater to 5 km depth 11.0
• Lakes 0.0051
• Atmosphere 0.000959
• Rivers 0.00008
• Biological Water 0.000005
Water - the primary resource
Without water we have no life, no productive capacity - all is dust and rock
The Water Cycle
When water “does it’s duty” in the landscape it becomes the basis of our farming and productive land
based enterprises and gives us both Water Purification and
Biomass Production
All of our work is based upon Permaculture Design Principles
andP A Yeomans Keyline System
Capture and Store Energy: The Swale
A swale is a large hollow or shallow ditch (a broad drain), which runs along the contour of a slope, which is intended to pool and then
absorb surplus water flow by infiltration - recharging groundwater.
Trees and other fibrous/deep rooted vegetation are an integral part of the infiltration process and take over this
function from the bare earthworks after several years.
Wetland Ecosystem Treatment (WET Systems)
These are constructed wetland ecosystems for wastewater purification,
resource production and habitat creation
A WET System views the ‘wastewater’ not as a ‘problem to be got rid of’, but as an unused resource which feeds the process and is converted into multiple yields including:
• Willow wands and other craft materials
• Biomass fuel and polewood
• Fruit and Nut trees as well as soft fruit
• Wildflower/wetland plant material and seed
• Nectar, Pollen and Honey
• Fish, Venison, Pheasants
A WET System is a Horizontal, Plug-flow, Soil-Mycorrhyzal, Multi-species
Purification and Production System
• A WET System uses the metabolic processes of the microbial species - which live in a beneficial symbiosis with the plants and trees within the system.
• It is this ‘processing ability’ which purifies the wastewater passing through the WET System.
A WET System also sequesters carbon dioxide, by the creation
of soil as well as plant and microbial biomass.
For the past 2o years Biologic Design has planted between 5,000
and 100,000 trees each year on our WET Systems
A WET System does not use gravel as the purification medium and
neither does it use large quantities of plastic pipework.
The working lifetime of a WET System can be measured in decades,
perhaps centuries!
Westons Cider Mill WET System - 2005(created in 1993-4)
Bioengineering in action
A WET System is a ‘bioengineering’ design solution which uses biological
‘components’ - both plant andmicrobial communities -
to accomplish the required ‘engineering functions’ of wastewater
purification, odour control and soil stabilisation
Here are the fruiting bodies of just some of the tireless
‘willing-workers’ (the fungi, slime moulds and mycorrhiza)
who are busy, on the job 24 hours a day - and who require no pay and take no holidays!
Sheppy’s Cider Farm WET System
Earthworks started
August 20th 2007
Sheppy’s Cider Farm WET System
May 2009
Sheppy’s Cider Farm WET System
September 2009
(two years after earthworks)
So a WET System is a wastewater purification system created and
planted specifically to provide not only clean water with minimal or no non-renewable energy use, but also to produce a useful economic yield.
What if we harvested and stored rainwater in a series of productive
swales with similar intent on a farm or a smallholding?
“The Crossing”
A Whole Site Water Reticulation,
Agroforestry/Silvopastoral Production System
The site’s design and planting gives greater resilience to the landscape, its
aim to create soil (with a healthy fungal and mycorrhizal population)
This is to enable a more varied production potential and to both
minimise soil erosion and maximise the potential for soil regeneration - especially if it proves that the grazing regime works
as well in creating deep soil in the temperate zone as it does in more ‘brittle’
environments.
With this series of swales in place the layout on site is moderating the worst excesses the
weather can give us.
Water is held on site so that we have more water available in drought conditions, and also by
holding water in the swale ditches and increasingly in the deepening carbon rich soil - which acts as a sponge - the regime causes less
risk of flooding downstream.
Water flows through the site is along a well-delineated flow pattern, this being planted and therefore enabling more productive landscape which is not prone to either drought or flood.
Biologic Design
Wetland Ecosystem Services
whole site water reticulation, wastewater purification, resource production & habitat creation
