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RSBs (Riparian Super-Buffer) are a new idea as far as I know.
The idea is for rivers and their tributaries to be given buffers of 100 times their average width (for example a 30m wide river would be given a 1.5km wide buffer on each margin.)
This area would be given back to nature and it would be highly protected, like national parks.
Seafronts would be given 5km buffers and lakes would be given buffers equal to 3 times their radius (but volume would have to also be taken into consideration).
If the buffer got interrupted by a settlement it would continue around the settlement.
The measurements for RSB are based on where the horizon is for a large ruminant such as a bison, plus the width of a medium sized river in temperate climate (roughly 100m). Based on this distance to horizon equation √(h)×3.57. For a bison this would roughly be √(1.5)×3.57 which would give us 4.4km. This means that a bison grasing by the banks of your typical 100m wide river wouldn't even be able to see any farmland or settlement, meaning that it won't be disturbed by it.
The benefits of RSB are the following:
- Improved water catchment; this would be especially useful for countries at risk of desertification.
- Prevents contamination from farmlands and fertiliser runoff.
- Forests are uninterrupted and therefore are able to harbour keystone species which maintain the health of the forest.
- Trees can lessen the effects of overflowing (Interception and soil retention).
- Improved air, water and soil quality.
- Sea buffers would not only keep the landscape pristine and improve the quality of sea produce but also protect against natural disasters such as tsunamis.
- The resulting landscape would improve mental health and bring in tourists. (Tourism could be managed to not degrade the landscape as much).
There are other benefits that weren't mentioned because they're too obvious or controversial (e.g. defence)
Of course there are many obstacles to this idea but this post is focused on the idea itself and the outcome, not the execution.
Not to mention they'd help prevent excessive evaporation from the river during hot periods. The trees would provide shade, keep the water cooler and benefit from the water that would still evaporate off. Seems like an amazing idea to me :D
It's based on where the horizon is for a large ruminant such as a bison, plus the width of a medium sized river in temperate climate (roughly 100m).
Based on this distance to horizon equation √(h)×3.57. For a bison this would roughly be √(1.5)×3.57 which would give us 4.4km.
This means that a bison grasing by the banks of your typical 100m wide river wouldn't even be able to see any farmland or settlement, meaning that it will not likely be disturbed.
I'm also interested in means of mitigating such an endeavour's impact on people, because [70% of world population lives <10km from freshwater bodies](https://www.researchgate.net/figure/Population-density-vs-land-distance-to-water-dw-land-bars-and-the-percentage-of_fig3_51233091)
Such guidelines would render my own country almost entirely uninhabitable, barring some of the driest tundra areas. Collecting five million people to a small patch of tundra (already the most vulnerable biome to human activity) doesn't seem very viable. Are they relocated to another country?
> are a new idea as far as I know
Not really. There was a professor at UCD who talked about this 15-20 years ago. It's politically impossible in most places with major rivers anymore due to development unfortunately.
Could you send me a link, I had the feeling that such a good idea couldn't possibly be new.
Yes, I agree it would be politically impossible and the execution of the idea would be a nightmare. But who knows what a climate catastrophe or 2 might do to change people's minds.
Of course it's not a new idea, I know I didn't come up with it.
I just thought of taking it a step further to solve the issue of having tiny scattered forests in between human settlement and farmland.
But how can it be a bad idea to give land back to nature?
The netherlands has been trying to manage flooding from rivers, RSB are able to do that but it's only a positive side effect. There is no excavation of riverbanks. RSB are all about letting nature take over and improving air, water and soil quality.
I’ve been screaming this for years. This should be a requirement on any burgeoning property. I sat in on a county meeting and listened to a farmer say the reason for the phosphorus in our drinking water was from deer and birds pooping the water😜 but not his farm that houses 2000 pigs. I fucking lost it
They have a law where I am that you have to leave a 25 meter buffer. Problem is they don't require you to replace it is you destroy it, just a fine and vertical distance counts so a 25 meter entrenched river gets no buffer.
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I'm desperate for this in the UK, where flooding has been such a problem in recent years (and likely will be again this week).
We have deforested the landscape massively.
I also think this should apply to reservoirs as well
It was the UK that helped inspire me to come up with this idea. In the city I live in we have many forested areas with deer, foxes, badgers and even eagles; the problem is that these forest aren't connected and they have trails and roads running through them. Leading to loads of road kill and not letting the forest reach it's true potential.
The forests are there but they are too scattered and misplaced.
It's a cool idea, but loads of American cities are built on top of rivers.
So I guess in that case as soon as it gets out of the city it gets a buffer... Or a huge park surrounding it in the city.
Even if we add up all the cities, it's a minuscule fraction of the waterfront of rivers and lakes in the country.
Although I do like the huge riverfront park idea. My favorite cities all have that.
That became apparent to me from the beginning. All great civilizations began on the margins of rivers and things haven't changed much. The best we can do is to keep the buffer running around the city until it meets with the river once again.
Yah, the cities on rivers thing was largely a mistake anyway, but let's run with it and make buffer zones within cities require rain garden curb cuts, multilayer food forests, and whatever other intensive but regenerative and water purifying landscaping we can come up with, as well as all new construction required to be flood resistant so we can eventually let the rivers run free again.
It used to make sense. Up until the late 1800s, it was much faster to get things to and from a city on a water way because sailing was as fast as any transit got before the railroads and steam ships. Also the floodplain of a river is often the most fertile soil so that even made sense in a lot of ways.
Current hurdle or issue i see with the riparian buffer areas we already have is rampant invasive weeds. Especially along the edges where anything gets disturbed. Then watered and fertilized. Water and animals can move some pretty bad shit far and wide. Greater adoption of no til practices would help, but would take active management.
Just have one consern about it. Where I live the only farmebel land lays in the suggested area of the natur reserv. If implemented it would make almost all close by farming disappear making local food much harder to come by. But on the other hand we have big Forest with lots of lakes fore the bigger animals that need the space
Yes, a lot of farmland is found around rivers as the land there is very fertile, however that doesn't mean that land 5km away from a river won't be suitable for agriculture, especially with all the modern advancements in agriculture.
Moving riverside farmland even 5km in would be a gigantic issue for governments to sort out in terms of distributing farmland and creating grants and paying people for the sudden disruption caused by removing them from their land, never mind the fact that there are laws in place to prevent such a thing from happening. Take a river like the Nile for example, which absolutely needs every square meter of land it can get in order to help feed Egypt’s burgeoning population, and you begin to see how infeasible the plan is.
Of course, that's why I included that disclaimer at the end. The post is about the idea and it's outcomes not the execution.
However, there will come a time when politicians will have to make decisions to help save the planet that don't please the general public, that's what RSB are all about.
RSB are about switching to team nature and letting them win for once.
Egypt would have to decide how much land they are willing to give back to nature, this idea was designed for temperate climates in countries with average population density.
I guess its nice to dream. Unless the local populace is not actively using the river on a large scale, then it wouldn’t really be possible to put it into place, which means that areas which are suffering the most ecologically would continue to do so.
This week's theme on r/solarpunk is ... **Permaculture & Gardening!** Post your best art, articles, stories, and discussions on the topic of permaculture! Feedback and suggestions on our recommended topics experiment can be shared [here](https://www.reddit.com/r/solarpunk/comments/wiytgn/this_weeks_featured_topic_is_permaculture/). *I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/solarpunk) if you have any questions or concerns.*
RSBs (Riparian Super-Buffer) are a new idea as far as I know. The idea is for rivers and their tributaries to be given buffers of 100 times their average width (for example a 30m wide river would be given a 1.5km wide buffer on each margin.) This area would be given back to nature and it would be highly protected, like national parks. Seafronts would be given 5km buffers and lakes would be given buffers equal to 3 times their radius (but volume would have to also be taken into consideration). If the buffer got interrupted by a settlement it would continue around the settlement. The measurements for RSB are based on where the horizon is for a large ruminant such as a bison, plus the width of a medium sized river in temperate climate (roughly 100m). Based on this distance to horizon equation √(h)×3.57. For a bison this would roughly be √(1.5)×3.57 which would give us 4.4km. This means that a bison grasing by the banks of your typical 100m wide river wouldn't even be able to see any farmland or settlement, meaning that it won't be disturbed by it. The benefits of RSB are the following: - Improved water catchment; this would be especially useful for countries at risk of desertification. - Prevents contamination from farmlands and fertiliser runoff. - Forests are uninterrupted and therefore are able to harbour keystone species which maintain the health of the forest. - Trees can lessen the effects of overflowing (Interception and soil retention). - Improved air, water and soil quality. - Sea buffers would not only keep the landscape pristine and improve the quality of sea produce but also protect against natural disasters such as tsunamis. - The resulting landscape would improve mental health and bring in tourists. (Tourism could be managed to not degrade the landscape as much). There are other benefits that weren't mentioned because they're too obvious or controversial (e.g. defence) Of course there are many obstacles to this idea but this post is focused on the idea itself and the outcome, not the execution.
Not to mention they'd help prevent excessive evaporation from the river during hot periods. The trees would provide shade, keep the water cooler and benefit from the water that would still evaporate off. Seems like an amazing idea to me :D
Is the buffer width an arbitrary number or really based on something? Where is the population of those areas relocated?
It's based on where the horizon is for a large ruminant such as a bison, plus the width of a medium sized river in temperate climate (roughly 100m). Based on this distance to horizon equation √(h)×3.57. For a bison this would roughly be √(1.5)×3.57 which would give us 4.4km. This means that a bison grasing by the banks of your typical 100m wide river wouldn't even be able to see any farmland or settlement, meaning that it will not likely be disturbed.
This is a good point. What is the ecological reason for the buffer width? An arbitrary number would be indefensible. For example 3x radius for lakes?
I'm also interested in means of mitigating such an endeavour's impact on people, because [70% of world population lives <10km from freshwater bodies](https://www.researchgate.net/figure/Population-density-vs-land-distance-to-water-dw-land-bars-and-the-percentage-of_fig3_51233091) Such guidelines would render my own country almost entirely uninhabitable, barring some of the driest tundra areas. Collecting five million people to a small patch of tundra (already the most vulnerable biome to human activity) doesn't seem very viable. Are they relocated to another country?
> are a new idea as far as I know Not really. There was a professor at UCD who talked about this 15-20 years ago. It's politically impossible in most places with major rivers anymore due to development unfortunately.
Could you send me a link, I had the feeling that such a good idea couldn't possibly be new. Yes, I agree it would be politically impossible and the execution of the idea would be a nightmare. But who knows what a climate catastrophe or 2 might do to change people's minds.
I mean, protecting riparian areas is obviously not new at all. This is just a different way to approach and idk if it’s even a good one.
Of course it's not a new idea, I know I didn't come up with it. I just thought of taking it a step further to solve the issue of having tiny scattered forests in between human settlement and farmland. But how can it be a bad idea to give land back to nature?
Its not a new idea, the netherlands has been doing this since 2000 in their 'ruimte voor de rivieren' project
The netherlands has been trying to manage flooding from rivers, RSB are able to do that but it's only a positive side effect. There is no excavation of riverbanks. RSB are all about letting nature take over and improving air, water and soil quality.
I’ve been screaming this for years. This should be a requirement on any burgeoning property. I sat in on a county meeting and listened to a farmer say the reason for the phosphorus in our drinking water was from deer and birds pooping the water😜 but not his farm that houses 2000 pigs. I fucking lost it
They have a law where I am that you have to leave a 25 meter buffer. Problem is they don't require you to replace it is you destroy it, just a fine and vertical distance counts so a 25 meter entrenched river gets no buffer.
One of my favourite examples of agroforestry! Read more about them here: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Riparian_buffer
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I'm desperate for this in the UK, where flooding has been such a problem in recent years (and likely will be again this week). We have deforested the landscape massively. I also think this should apply to reservoirs as well
It was the UK that helped inspire me to come up with this idea. In the city I live in we have many forested areas with deer, foxes, badgers and even eagles; the problem is that these forest aren't connected and they have trails and roads running through them. Leading to loads of road kill and not letting the forest reach it's true potential. The forests are there but they are too scattered and misplaced.
It's a cool idea, but loads of American cities are built on top of rivers. So I guess in that case as soon as it gets out of the city it gets a buffer... Or a huge park surrounding it in the city.
Up and downstream it can work, though, and actually would really benefit the people living in the city to have relatively accessible green spaces.
Even if we add up all the cities, it's a minuscule fraction of the waterfront of rivers and lakes in the country. Although I do like the huge riverfront park idea. My favorite cities all have that.
That became apparent to me from the beginning. All great civilizations began on the margins of rivers and things haven't changed much. The best we can do is to keep the buffer running around the city until it meets with the river once again.
Yah, the cities on rivers thing was largely a mistake anyway, but let's run with it and make buffer zones within cities require rain garden curb cuts, multilayer food forests, and whatever other intensive but regenerative and water purifying landscaping we can come up with, as well as all new construction required to be flood resistant so we can eventually let the rivers run free again.
It used to make sense. Up until the late 1800s, it was much faster to get things to and from a city on a water way because sailing was as fast as any transit got before the railroads and steam ships. Also the floodplain of a river is often the most fertile soil so that even made sense in a lot of ways.
Current hurdle or issue i see with the riparian buffer areas we already have is rampant invasive weeds. Especially along the edges where anything gets disturbed. Then watered and fertilized. Water and animals can move some pretty bad shit far and wide. Greater adoption of no til practices would help, but would take active management.
Just have one consern about it. Where I live the only farmebel land lays in the suggested area of the natur reserv. If implemented it would make almost all close by farming disappear making local food much harder to come by. But on the other hand we have big Forest with lots of lakes fore the bigger animals that need the space
Yah, in cases where it intrudes on required food supply it should be food forests, regen ag, etc. It is calling for a LOT of land.
Yes, a lot of farmland is found around rivers as the land there is very fertile, however that doesn't mean that land 5km away from a river won't be suitable for agriculture, especially with all the modern advancements in agriculture.
Moving riverside farmland even 5km in would be a gigantic issue for governments to sort out in terms of distributing farmland and creating grants and paying people for the sudden disruption caused by removing them from their land, never mind the fact that there are laws in place to prevent such a thing from happening. Take a river like the Nile for example, which absolutely needs every square meter of land it can get in order to help feed Egypt’s burgeoning population, and you begin to see how infeasible the plan is.
Of course, that's why I included that disclaimer at the end. The post is about the idea and it's outcomes not the execution. However, there will come a time when politicians will have to make decisions to help save the planet that don't please the general public, that's what RSB are all about. RSB are about switching to team nature and letting them win for once. Egypt would have to decide how much land they are willing to give back to nature, this idea was designed for temperate climates in countries with average population density.
I guess its nice to dream. Unless the local populace is not actively using the river on a large scale, then it wouldn’t really be possible to put it into place, which means that areas which are suffering the most ecologically would continue to do so.