Regenerative Skills

Welcome everyone to the first episode of season 9. The beginning of the 9th year of making this show. I’ve got a lot of exciting new projects and collaborations coming up that I’ll be bringing you along for including some ambitious water restoration projects, educational trainings for regen ag transition in Europe, and  quite a few mini series on new topics and perspectives on regeneration that I’...

Hello and welcome back to a special New Year episode. Unlike the normal interview format today I want to take some time to reflect on the past year, answer some very tough and thought provoking questions from the Discord community, and explain my vision and planned projects for the year to come, or at least the ones I can foresee from this early vantage point.  It’s always surprising to me how thi...

I’m excited to announce that we've restarted the panel format. Many of you will remember that I used to put together monthly panels with experts on popular topics. The truth is that they can be tough to coordinate and take a lot more planning than regular interview episodes so I let them go while I focused on other projects, but thanks to help from some digital tools and popular requests from list...

Long time listeners to this show will know that soil health and deep soil science are not my specialty. I’ve done quite a few interviews on soil over the years, but I’ve usually looked for broader patterns and simple concepts around health soil function, and left the lab work and understanding all the microbes and fungi to others. A few weeks ago however I was invited by my friend Isa to a soil fo...

This last week has been incredible for me. After almost 5 years of being connected to different aspects of the work at the farm in La Junquera, first through my connection with Silvia Quarta the leader of Camp Altiplano, the first in the global Ecosystem Restoration Communities network back when I worked at the restoration coordinator, then through collaborations with Alfonzo and Yanniek through t...

Welcome to the final episode in mine and Nick’s 3 part series on drought. In the first episode we talked about how drought was affecting our two homes at the moment. His home on the island of Tenerife, and my own in Northeastern Spain. We went over the definition of drought and some common myths and misconceptions, as well as the major factors that can make drought more common and severe.  In the...

Continuing with our deep dive into drought, my good friend Nick Steiner and I are going to move now from defining drought and the its myriad of causes and factors that make it worse, to a wide range of solutions and opportunities available to people who are living in different environments and with different access to land and space.  You may not be surprised to hear that we ended up running long...

It’s that time again. In todays’ regenerative round table, my good friend Nick Steiner and I give updates on our respective projects. Him on the Island of Tenerife and myself in the mountains of central Catalunya in Spain. In the update we talk about some of the challenges we’ve been experiencing this year. The big topic at the moment for us, and many other in this area of the world, is drought. P...

Continuing on the journey we started in the last episode, Nick and I went to the next project where we got to install the types of water retention features that we had designed for the previous clients.  Together we talk about the joys and the challenges of site where we were creating these earthworks. Over the previous summer the whole landscape had burned in a wildfire and the clients there are...

We’re starting in a big way with a special episode in which me and my good friend and collaborator Nick Steiner will be taking you along with us on a client visit in the south of Portugal in the very first steps of a water retention landscape project.  We’ll be giving you a behind the scenes look at what we do on these jobs, the landscape indicators that we’re observing to inform our concept plans...

Today I want to go back to one of my favorite episodes of the last few years. This was back at the start of the 7th season, so almost two years ago. I was trying out a new format as I headed out on a water retention landscape job, which the episode will explain in a minute. The reason why I’m choosing to re-release this episode now is because I’ve been covering so many aspects around the topic of...

In this series on water, the one area that I've left out so far is the urban landscape. In this week’s episode I got to chat with Jerry Yudelson, the author of 13 full-length professional and trade books on green buildings, integrated design, green homes, water conservation, building performance and sustainable development. Dubbed ‘The Godfather of Green’ by Wired Magazine, Jerry’s passion for opt...

As the importance of the water cycle to global climate regulation has gained attention in the last few years, I’ve also seen an emergence of voices working to explain the science and the details of the intricate workings and contributors to the nuance of water cycles. One of my favorites and one I’ve come to count on to consistently expand my understanding about working with water is that of Ali B...

So much of the conversation around water revolves around its scarcity. Today we’ll get a chance to explore how to manage water regeneratively when the challenge is having too much. As arid zones become drier, the opposite is proving true for humid zones. The North American eastern seaboard is looking like an emblematic case of this. As storms become stronger and charged with massive evaporation fr...

In this session I hosted a discussion on the importance of restoring proper hydrological function in a landscape and the steps to achieving it with my friends and colleagues at Climate Farmers, a non-profit organisation working to advance regenerative agriculture in Europe. In this panel I got to speak with three of the most experienced and influential educators working on this from a farming pers...

Continuing today with this ongoing series on waterway regeneration and a deep dive into marine ecosystems, I had the pleasure of speaking with Brian Von Herzen.  Brian is an ocean scientist, engineer and entrepreneur, though much of his career has been in Silicon Valley where he developed innovative technical solutions for companies like Pixar, Dolby and Microsoft. Brian is also the founder and Ex...

Today I want to continue with a deeper dive into the topic of water, literally, by going to the furthest point downstream, where terrestrial water enters the ocean.  Marine ecosystems are much less understood by the general public for a variety of reasons, but our actions on land have a direct effect on the health of our oceans too. Luckily there are incredible teams of people looking to address t...

While the climate change narrative has mostly focused on the concentration of CO2 and other greenhouse gasses in the atmosphere since the industrial revolution, we’ve ignored the essential role that the water cycle plays in regulating global temperatures. In this series I’ll be speaking to an incredible list of scientists, farmers, and restorationists who are dedicated to reviving the precious wat...

My guest today is here to demystify one of the aspects of permaculture design that I hear the most questions about, but also one of the issues that I see folks most entrenched in their viewpoints about. I’m talking about earthworks; one of the first aspects that people implement and the most permanent change made in a landscape. Today I’ve got Douglas Barnes, author of “permaculture earthworks” an...

 I spoke with David Spicer, affectionately known as Doc Spice, an accomplished permaculture designer who has specialized in earthworks installation. Having taught and worked on various projects extensively within Australia and internationally, in places such as Morocco, Jordan, Palestine and New Caledonia, Doc has worked in a broad array of different soil types, topographies and climatic zones. He...

In keeping with the theme of water regeneration this month I spoke to Rob Avis, the co-author along with Michelle Avis of their book in the New Society Essentials series called Rain Water Harvesting. Rob and Michelle founded Verge Permaculture, an award-winning design, consulting and education company in Calgary, Alberta after years of international training in renewable energy and regenerative de...

If at any point you’ve been interested in water harvesting in dryland contexts, it’s almost impossible that you’ve missed Brad Lancaster’s work. His pioneering activities and projects in Tucson, AZ have propelled a movement of water wise landscaping, rainwater harvesting, and smart water reuse all around the world. While so many of the examples I’ve highlighted in this series relate to actions and...

In today’s episode I spoke with Van Clothier about an innovative and subtle water erosion mitigation technique, and how to build a one rock dam. I know this might seem oddly specific, but after an interview with Brad Lancaster last season, he talked about how he’s been learning from people like Van and his mentor Bill Zeedyk about smaller, less intrusive interventions that can have profound effect...

I had done one other episode in the past on the topic of floating wetlands that I’d like to revisit today as we continue with this series on regenerative water solutions.  In today’s episode I got to speak with Bruce Kania of Floating Island International which developed their patented Biohaven floating island technology as a solution to algae-ridden and nutrient impaired waterways since 2005. Sin...

Today we’re going to take a look at fresh water systems and specifically, how to decontaminate them through biological methods. Some of you may remember an interview I did with Tom Duncan about his floating wetlands and how they can be used to clean up excessive nutrients and pollutants back in season 1. Today I’ll be expanding on that technique since it´s gained a lot of traction and floating isl...