Reversing desertification and regenerating life on degraded lands (interview with ashleigh brown of ecosystem restoration camps)
Ashleigh Brown (@ashleighbrown696) is the co-founder of Ecosystem Restoration Camps (@ecosytem.restoration.camps), which is a grassroots nonprofit that builds research, training, and innovation centers for ecological restoration all around the world.
If you're wondering how you can get your hands dirty to help restore degraded lands, enrich ecosystems with biodiversity, and sequester soil carbon, this conversation is one not to be missed!
In this podcast episode, Ashleigh sheds light on what it means for climate change that 90% of our greenhouse gases by volume is water vapor; what it takes to regenerate life and help jumpstart the water cycle on desertified lands; and more.
To start, get a glimpse below into the conversation between Ashleigh and Green Dreamer Podcast's host, Kamea Chayne.
Musical feature: Trust The Sun by Mountain Twin by Joel Porter (@JoelPorterMusic)
“Because of desertification, the water cycle has been broken. The water vapor remains in the air because it can’t find places to fall as rain, which is a cause of droughts and flooding.”
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This is a conversation on Green Dreamer with Kamea Chayne, a podcast and multimedia journal illuminating our paths towards ecological balance, intersectional sustainability, and true abundance and wellness for all. This preview has been edited for clarity. Subscribe to Green Dreamer Podcast on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Stitcher, or any podcast app to stay informed and updated on our latest episodes.
On restoring the water cycle to address climate change:
"There are multiple greenhouse gases in the atmosphere; it's not just carbon dioxide. Carbon dioxide is the one that's got the most attention, but what a lot of people don't realize is that 90% of the greenhouse gases in our atmosphere are actually just water vapor.
Everyone learns the water cycle at school, but a lot of people don't think about how our actions can impact it.
When you remove vegetation from the earth, which is done not just through agriculture but through urbanization as well (because we've put concrete over so much of the earth's surface now), it's broken the water cycle. So when there's vegetation—trees on the surface of the earth—water vapor rises from the ground and then as it's met by water vapor falling from the air, they form clouds. And then it rains.
Because of desertification due to agriculture, mining, and urbanization covering the ground with impermeable surfaces, the water cycle has been broken, and water vapor remains in the air because it can't find places to fall as rain, which is what causes droughts and flooding as well.
That's one of the main ways that desertification is causing climate change, as well as the fact that [desertification reduces] vegetation photosynthesizing which sequesters carbon and releases oxygen."
On how to revive indigenous microorganisms in the soil:
"Indigenous microorganisms are microorganisms needed to be put back into the ground to recolonize the soil and spread the food web.
The way that you create them is you get some cooked rice, you put it in something breathable, and you bury that underneath an old tree in a place where the ecosystem hasn't been disrupted or destroyed.
Then you come back, and the surface of the rice will be covered with little specks of black, yellow, purple-y stuff. You mix it with molasses, and the molasses feeds the microbes and microorganisms. And you then mix that with wheat bran and that feeds it more, and then you mix that with soil.
So whenever we planted anything, we'd put mycorrhizal fungi, which is needed to recreate the mycorrhizal web underneath the soil, and we put these microorganisms in. So those are two really cool techniques for rebuilding the soil.
Once it's there, you need to continuously feed it with compost teas. What builds soil organic matter is those microorganisms living, multiplying, and dying. Their bodies become this rich soil that builds up over time."
On the vital role of animals in restoring landscapes and enriching agro-ecosystems:
"You can't have an ecosystem without animals in it. It doesn't make any sense. If you look at natural ecosystems, animals are critical—they're a crucial part of it.
That really changed my views on animal agriculture, because before, I was very reductionist in my thinking—that you need to reduce and you need to just take the animals away because they are the problem. That's not actually the case.
Whether you eat them or not is a different story, and that's up to you. But in terms of ecosystem restoration, we have to mimic the way nature works in how we grow our food.
So animals need to play a key role in [agro-ecosystems]."
Final words of wisdom:
"Nature is incredibly resilient and powerful.
If we just let her be, then she'll come springing back, and all of our problems will be resolved.”
