A harvest of water: National Geographics November 2009

How do people people in the small village of Satichiwadi create a watershed plan that helps to create a sustainable water program? This Indian village obtains most of its water during the monsoon season--a period from June to September. The monsoon season, according to the article, supplies India nationally with 75 percent of its annual rainfall, in varying degrees of intensity. "Satichiwadi lies in India's rain shadow, an especially water-deprived swath of land that includes much of central Maharashtra. Each year after the summer monsoon pounds the west coast of India, it moves inward across the plains and bumps against the 5,00-foot peaks of the Western Ghats, where the clouds stall out, leaving the leeward side punishingly dry" (pp. 115-116). The watershed plan, which uses trenches and terraces throughout the landscape to catch water, constitutes a three-year program created with the cooperation of the Watershed Organization Trust.

Indigenous farmers have undertaken the work of excavation and planting seedlings. This grassroots, bottom-up approach has won the approval of the villagers. The program aims to minimize the number of felled trees, "increase plant cover on the land, and build a well-planned series of dams and earthen terraces to divert and slow the downhill flow of rainwater" (p. 118). Greater absorption of water in the soil, more new vegetation, and a decrease of erosion results, increasing the fertility of the land.