The Massive Effect Of A Simple Structure In A High Desert

What's growing on everyone I'm Brandon and this is the greening the desert project. Pretty nice the wash was flowing doesn't look like it was going too hard but I'm glad I at least get to come down and see it still running ever so slightly. See this little path it's dammed up right over there nice I can see so here's the two check dams that I usually kind of look at you can see what these are doing so definitely can build this one up even more so there's kind of that main exit point it looks like so I can build that up a whole lot more but this is definitely backing up the water like it's supposed to so that's at least slowing the water way more than what it was before and soaking that much more water into the ground too super cool check dams gotta add more rocks now so today I'm down here in the wash and I actually want to go through all of the different check dams that I've staggered throughout this wash and I'm going to be taking into consideration the damage report you could think so when we're building these check dams especially in areas that have a whole lot of water flow through them there's definitely going to be some maintenance and upkeep that's going to occur basically whether we're doing check dams or any other earthworks or rainwater harvesting structures but for right now I want to focus on the check dams so let's go take a look at each one of these check dams just to get a little damage report see what's going on with them and just keep in mind that we're actually coming in on all of these earthworks essentially after a few weeks of rain and after two mega dumps of rain that were almost an inch and a half I think on both occasions so a whole lot of water was flowing down this section so we're going to be coming to check dam number one and I'll keep a tab on the corner of the screen there with the check dams as I go along here so this was the check dam that I had done a live feed on as I was building it up and also the members had gotten a little sneak peek at me building it up and getting to witness the water rise so coming to this check dam we're coming in after about two weeks worth of rain and a couple torrential downpours essentially equating to a little over three inches of rain total which is really cool because this wash had flowed a few good times and steady flows as well as major flows so now I can see coming back to this check dam all the sediment that has started gathering up all along this and it's leveled itself out for the most part which is really cool but the one thing I do want to note between all of the check dams at least so for here we can see how big these boulders are so even like this one look at compared to my hand so that's a pretty big boulder and that's essentially what I've tried to do along the wash is just work with a lot of the bigger boulders that are already in place and already showing that they're stopping and slowing the water and gathering sediment up so it's really just me coming in and filling in the pieces so you can see the little bit of rocks that I've done to help fill in some of these gaps and I've rolled a few of these bigger ones in took the effort at least for that but you can see that sediment that's building up which is really cool and from the video you could see that this was kind of the overfill this is a really open spot anyway so just knowing that it's leveling off on this point and spreading that water and getting more sediment up the bank it's a really good sign for sure so then at least that way knowing more water is getting soaked into this area and further going down the bedrock or wherever it hits and continues down the way but don't let me forget either because this spot is pretty much a candidate for building up more and then a few other of these gaps but essentially since the sediment has built up on this level with the rocks just means that I can basically come in and really start filling it in a whole lot more especially on this bottom so looking at it from the side essentially it's going to get stacked up more like a pyramid with kind of the cut off top a little bit so a flatter top and so that's essentially the next phase of a lot of these check dams at least so building this up and then getting this level a little bit higher so then hopefully we'll get another good level of sediment built up that'll slow that much more water and then pretty much continue dropping more sediment in these areas all right so that's check dam number one we're going to continue down and walking through so it's not like I have check dams every couple of feet or anything it's like I said just working with certain spots like this spot right here is probably a good candidate to start stacking more rocks so this has kind of been a slower process on my part because there's obviously life things happening and all kinds of bits and pieces to work on and work around and just the homestead life as I'm sure most people know how it goes but that's the point is that this is a lifetime worth of projects so never get bored and then just kind of getting back on track here you can see I pretty much walked down the way here and it was a good ways from that first check dam and I guess that's just something to point out even along the walk is there's all these different points that I can basically start stacking more rocks and filling in and creating all of these little mini check dams along the way to just further help slow the water but also further gather sediment because essentially that's just like the end goal or the outlook in the future a little bit is seeing this as just multi-steps of terraces that are helping slow the water soak and then just having that nice slower or slowed momentum spill over waterfall effect all right check dam number two check check check check number two so coming to this check dam if I don't trip over the rocks this one is pretty cool because this is kind of the main check dam that I usually talk about partially because this one's just my favorite it's a little bit bigger span and this one just picks up a whole lot of a whole lot more sediment and then it kind of has the secondary one that I kind of have been chipping away at a little bit it's kind of hard to see but if you just notice a little bit the pattern of that line that's right there with the rocks so that's kind of the benefit that I have at least here is the abundance of rocks on either side of the bank so I can pick and choose all the rocks that I want for the most part and if they're not too far away then I can get some of these bigger ones I can kind of roll those bigger ones but honestly if you look back on the first wash video I did this season that was the major overfill because that was almost an inch and a half of rain that came down in the area and essentially this whole wash was just overflowing I mean the water was pretty much up this part of the tree so if I could find it's hard to find spots sometimes but even here you can kind of see this is organic material this is stuff not supposed to be there so this is how high the water line can get even up here so to put that let me put my foot even there's my foot for perspective so it's at least two feet up of water so I mean I'm kneeling on the ground right now so the water would be up to my shoulders all right to give a little perspective you can at least see the side by side so right about here is where the organic material is kind of built up in the tree so this is a little over my knees or my kneecaps worth of water so at least like a foot and a half was about where the water level I'd gotten I think during the big torrential storm that's about how high I could build the check dams up to and essentially holding a whole lot more water in place where in the future I could get a pump to basically start pumping the water out of here and at least it has a spillway to continue the flow down the stream and upstream too that's the other part definitely want to consider that because all this water that gets backed up so just coming back to this point of view it's really one thing that you could see in the video where the water was escaping from so definitely can build this one up even more and even further just looking at where the water was exiting you can just look right here this has this nice little bevel so I can know for myself that that water had a lot of momentum still even after it's it had subsided but that's kind of one thing is when that thing was overfilling I mean like I showed the where the water level was I mean this thing was over spilling so who knows how much momentum and how much this thing was just carving out down below as it was just over spilling everything but even still just knowing that that just means building this up is going to be a priority and then maybe trying to fill this area in with rocks is part of the other strategy because that's just going to further stop and slow sediment and such and it's going to help build up the height of the check dam too so that's check dam number two that can definitely use some work especially in this spot I think too I can see that it got kind of carved out right there so that's yeah this was kind of a blowout I think too so it's kind of a shame you know we put all this work in and in one storm we can have things get wiped out just like that so all of that work and time spent can definitely have a little bit of impact on our self-esteem and just our motivation but I think that's a little bit why partially I do like to promote more so going slow and steady because this is a smaller check dam and even though these two points had blowouts or it was over spilling you know the rocks are right there for one but number two it's not like I spent hours or days or weeks on building that up and that really is just going to take you know a few minutes of fixing those spots but it will take some time to build everything else up so I might have already mentioned it but this is check dam number three that we're looking at along this little bit so you can see the spacing between those two is not very much but that's also partly because it's starting to dip down a whole lot lower there's a lot more slope to it which is kind of hard to show on camera so you can see a little bit there just it doesn't take much to dip down and you can't see over these rocks so this is check dam number three that needs fixing and I mean honestly I think all of them are going to otherwise it really is going to be just building everything up right now just for how high the water level got but then also looking at the sediment that's been building up as well so just a lot of these different signs that are showing just to continue building things up so now just walking down the wash you can kind of see you'd think some of these spots I did check dams oh there's a piece of plastic right there I'm going to remember that so it's going to be a little challenging on some of the spots to kind of notice because like this spot right here I didn't check dam this I didn't do any check damming or anything but you can see how nature has kind of staggered to make it staggered the rocks to make its own little check dam so that's kind of the cool thing is just take example and we can repeat copy and paste this one yep this is check dam number four so I know this is me because of some of these smaller rocks kind of tucked in here and then there's the bigger rocks so that it that's what I'm saying it's a little bit hard to distinguish a little bit of what I have done versus uh what I haven't done or what the nature's done but this is one that I have stacked up at least slightly and you can see all this sediment that's been built up behind it so you know there's a lot of momentum that has been slowed because of nature's own check dams but then with uh I'm sure my added check dams as well but you can see just all the rocks so that's essentially this area right here this is what this all used to kind of look like to give you an idea and sadly I don't have the before and after clips to kind of show we're just getting after here to show the results because this has been about two years in the making for a lot of these check dams and we're all improving on our skills and abilities in any which way possible so my filming skills have been developing but at least being able to show just some of these comparisons at least of what things used to look like and then coming in now just like this to see all that sediment built up from just that puny little check dam and to continue down the walk so this one is hard to tell but I did do this one you can see I've pushed some of those smaller rocks you can just kind of know like some of you know this is about what I can carry and some of this is what I can push and then it's like this is just a ginormous boulder so you can see those just like that and working with the bigger stuff and just looking at the sediment that already was built up from kind of nature's own check dam and the previous shrubs or whatever those were that were growing here before I'm sure those contributed a whole lot to holding the sediment in and at least slowing the water down a little bit but now you can really see the sediment that's built up off of this check dam and this is probably the exit point the main exit point but all that sediment that's stacked up and leveled out this whole area is really cool just to see and just see how much has backed up because this thing doesn't run very often it's really just during the monsoon season and it takes a really big downpour for this to even start flowing even at the minimal level it takes the storms just to hit this area a little bit specifically so it's a hit or miss with the rain sometimes because this thing doesn't always flow when it's raining so it actually just my point being is it's kind of cool to see how much sediment in just a few storms over a few years how much things back up and how much sediment and potentially new topsoil is being created in those areas but also at the same time like we all know this is stopping and slowing that much more water than what used to be essentially in this area despite all the rocks already being here now it's just adding even more so just getting more water inputted or just adding more water to the underground water table hopefully oh don't let me lose count now because i was at three over there then i forgot to count so four five and then i'm coming to check dam number six so this is check dam number six that i've built up and this one right here is always kind of fun just to see the water flow but just the same we can see the sediment that is at least building up in between the rocks i think this is just a really tighter space so we could kind of imagine that there's a little bit more water pressure so it does build i think a little bit of momentum because it's squeezed but at the same time at least there's this check dam and then the one right above so these will at least slow the momentum a little bit just see how much all of this has been carved out over time all those roots that are dangling and trees and shrubs that are falling over so this is kind of a turn where the water is carving out this hillside slowly but then it reveals just this solid rock not sure what kind of rock it is but we've got cliff roses that are growing right out of the rock here so that's really cool just to show you the power of vegetation and it's not about tilling because this is compaction these things are growing right in the solid rock so the check dam number six continuing the walk this is actually kind of a squeezed spot nature's already done a little bit of its own check damming here so with all these big boulders and plenty of rock around i'll be able to kind of build this spot up more but i think at the same time it's gonna need the heavier rocks so really trying to avoid the smaller like palm or softball size rocks and probably trying to focus on rolling bigger rocks just because this is a tighter squeeze spot so just thinking of the water pressure and how much force is just going to be coming down this way because we do have to think that the water already has so much momentum i mean look at all the rocks that have scattered through this whole wash in the walk so far because you have to think even upstream that's what this water is fighting against even still and it's still having that much uh still having that much momentum coming down uh towards my way so this is a really cool feature in the wash not just because there's stuff growing out of the rocks that's always really cool but this just really shows almost where the soil level was so kind of at least getting it down of an angle if it was more gradual almost could think that this wash has slowly moved and widened out over time i'm sure because of certain features and variables and weather and uh what's been done to the land and surrounding land but even still it's almost cool to just see that this much rock had fractured off over time and essentially this might have been like i've talked about in previous videos how this might have been more of a flood plain altogether but obviously there was way more filled in at that point of time so this was almost a lot more level so when the rains did come there might have been an initial kind of trail but this water might have spread out a whole lot at least a whole lot more than it does and not necessarily confined into a channel like this now don't let me skip the next one because this is check dam number seven so this one has built up a lot of really good sediment so this one definitely can get built up more and probably widened out too so starting to cut into the bank on both sides for the most part because this water can get here we go here's an example of the organic material this water can get all the way up here like it did in that storm so that definitely can kind of get level with it yeah i mean that was overfilling it was covering everything with water during the big dump basically so that's check dam number seven and we're coming to check dam number eight hard to tell like i've said but this is one i have stacked up and it needs a lot more rocks that's the big thing but even still there's still all that sediment that has still built up even without me coming down here and messing with it check dam number eight got this one with its sediment there's a little bit of grass growing right there too so that's probably one thing you'll notice a little bit is the lack of vegetation almost that's in the wash itself it's too rocky i think there's not good super rocky silty and gravelly so i don't think there's like the best spots for the grasses and stuff to take hold especially because this thing fills the only time it's getting water is when it's washing and that's just washing all the seed and everything else so whatever's able to catch in the rocks and other places i'm sure it's able to take hold and if it's got water pooling in some of these spots to give it just further hydration so we're continuing down so what did i say that was check dam number seven this is number eight maybe that was number eight i'm going to look back this i'll just go with it though this is number seven if i don't trip on the rocks get focused here so we can see the sediment that's built up on this that's at least like about a foot of sediment that's built up you can see how much that water was ripping through look all these roots that got exposed and i should have mentioned too that i did cross over my property line so the last couple of check dams here they're actually not on my property they're on my neighbor's which is lucky that i'm good friends with the neighbor and doesn't mind that i do some check dams down in his area over here so i've got a little bit of a gap because there was some ideas floating around in some of the spots just because of the way it's almost easy to drive in and stuff and then there's material so there's a lot of things floating around but this is kind of on the back burner of things as far as down in the wash and and messing with stuff because there's still obviously stuff going on up top there's a lot more that i'm still working on and building and designing so we'll be able to get to those episodes soon enough but this actually is a little bit of a gap that i have before we get to the next check dams that i had started stagging and i think as well these were ones from when i first got here so these ones are almost three or three years old about i kind of forgot how long think i stuck a rock right there i don't know if i want to count that as a check dam maybe we will let's count that as check dam number nine because that's just like a tiny one that i put a few rocks because that's like solid rock right there so sediment that's built up at least in that little spot and so if you can kind of imagine even with that water level i mean this whole island gets pretty submerged just about when that water is flowing really good even though it's higher up like that when that thing's going it's a this thing is all filled you can't see anything it looks all it's all water colored it's all water covered so check dam number nine i think we'll have the counter so this is one just smaller rocks and this is kind of a wider spread area so the water definitely already spreads itself out pretty good especially with all the rocks and i mean it's not necessarily any different because nature's already kind of check damming all along the way here but at least where i had staggered rocks there's still sediment that's built up and then this is kind of a blowout spot you can kind of see it was trailing through here so i'm sure it moved some of my rocks out of the way so bigger rocks right there for repair i've got check dam number 10 this one hard to tell but this was me stuffing some of those smaller rocks in there but this was a blowout point i think those are all my rocks right there so i can kind of push all those back up and then maybe try to get a bigger rock to kind of stuff behind it too for building it up and just holding everything down more so walking down further this is check dam 11 and i've got a low spot yeah that's my rock i think right there so the force of the water was so great pushed over some of my rocks but still cool at the same time that nice sediment build up so this is really i think just this ongoing process like i've explained before there's always adjustments and improvements and just because the check dams were laid down once it doesn't mean things are completely finished although it does depend on the individual because one could just leave it and at least it's slowing and stopping and soaking that much more water in the long run or it can be the maintenance factor of just continuously building things up year after year when we have time so that's kind of my schedule at least is whenever i'm able to i can come down here and start stacking rocks a little bit one at a time so this is what check dam 11 12 the number counter will be on the screen you can see that so this one for sure i can work on this one had a blowout and that was all just a lot of smaller rocks so definitely bigger rocks on that one and that is pretty much the end of the line so actually where i'm standing is the further neighbor so this is beyond my friend's property but i know the neighbor too and he's pretty down for doing a lot of the earthworks and doing check dams and stuff in fact he's already got his own little thing in his own little pond he's kind of digging out over there he just hasn't said anything yet about it so i'm sure he's just getting examples from what's going on over here for himself but this is kind of the cool area and you can see from the footage how this area just has a whole lot of water that sits in it this is a pretty level or a leveled out spot all right i'm done looking at the check dams so i actually want to make my way back up to the top because as you can kind of see all this nice green growth and this is down below so i'm going to get up top to where all the earthworks are and really show all of the stuff that's going on and we've got chances of rain and it's been about a week later and i'm getting some more rain for what's real an experience felt for the ones to reveal healing these deserts