Người Chăn Đất

Listen to the soil · Know the soil · Know yourself · Walk alongside living things

Thirty months

Stage 1 · Dec 2023 – Feb 2024

Infrastructure and subsoil remediation

Infrastructure and subsoil remediation

Focus

Digging ponds, raising planting beds, building the irrigation and drainage system, constructing perimeter dykes, tilling and liming to reduce acidity.

Outcome

Core infrastructure in place. Localised waterlogging dropped noticeably and the subsoil began to stabilise.

Photographs from this stage

  • Abandoned acid sulfate land before remediation, bare ground with sparse weeds
    The acid sulfate land as we found it
  • Widely flooded land, still water reflecting the sky
    Waterlogged conditions
  • The first planting beds mounded up above the waterline
    Starting to raise the beds
  • A grower measuring and checking the newly raised beds
    Surveying the beds after raising them
  • Ditch water and soil stained rust-orange, the signature of active acid sulfate soil
    Acid water and rust-coloured soil
  • The acid-forming layer cut open: a streak of rust-yellow oxidised soil beside the blue-grey clay that has not yet oxidised
    Face to face with the acid-forming layer

Stage 1 of 4

Biomass growth and organic matter build-up
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