Thursday, October 27, 2011

Affordable & effective means of erosion control/slope stabilization




Whereas traditional engineering methods (such as gabion retaining walls, river training etc) and new technologies (see here) for landslide mitigation and soil erosion control are effective, most are exorbitantly costly, requiring huge investments.
Placed above are some other methods of slope stabilization which are much more affordable and therefore do-able at the community level and which are also very effective.
For those interested some more literature on use of jute geotextile and bamboo check dams for slope stabilization are here (1 & 2) and most of the 10,000 saplings of vetiver grass that we planted  in the monsoons are doing well. Next year we plan large scale plantation of this grass in this area.

Photo credits : Suren Chhetri (Tindharia) and self

Praful Rao

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