Like Hollow Point Bullets from the Sky – Combating Rain Splash Erosion

Soil is the foundation upon which we build, it is the canvas upon which we paint, and the medium upon which most plants rely for support and nutrients. In one square millimeter of soil there are over one billion organisms. The health of this complex habitat is essential to every ecosystem and restoration project.

Whether you are working to improve forage and cover in a pasture, re-vegetating a roadside slope, or restore a clear cut, the soil must be protected for vegetation to take hold and the site to recover. Bare soil is easily erodible and is vulnerable to a number of different threats. In this entry we’ll look at one of the key agents of erosion – Rain Splash.

As raindrops fall the pressure from the air on the bottom of the drop pushes it out of true and creates an inverse cup. When this drop impacts the soil the air pocket blows out the sides, dislodging soil particles and dispersing them up to 3’ away. Multiply and repeat this process a billions times for any given storm and the exposed soil on your site gets pulverized, detached, and ready to wash away. Over ground flow then takes these small, detached particles and transport them off the site.

The key to protecting your soil from rain splash erosion is covering the soil.

When a raindrop impacts against any sort of cover, its energy is dispersed and can’t detach soil particles. A marked example of this can be seen below where the gravel covered and dispersed the energy of the rain while the exposed soil was detached and washed out of the site.

Cover can take many forms from leaf litter, woody debris, rock, synthetic mulches, or living plants.

Whatever you choose to use, the important thing is to cover your soil!


As the chart above shows, a little ground cover goes a long way. With as little as 10% ground cover, erosion of bare soil can be reduced by 50%. With 50% coverage of bare ground, erosion can be reduced by over 90%.

So whether you’re hydro-mulching exposed slopes, planting cover crops on an exposed acreage, or just mulching your garden beds, cover your soil.

Protect the soil! It is the skeleton of your site and the heart of the ecosystem in which you are working. With protected, stable soil, you are well on your way to putting your site back on trajectory to health and sustainable future.

Charts were taken from The Nature and Properties of Soils by Nyle Brady & Ray Weil

Heed Ye the Ten Commandments of Restoration!

I. Protect the Good

Whether you are working to restore a degraded river channel, an over grazed pasture, or an urban wooded lot, note the functioning and healthy pieces of your project area and protect them. This is the essence of Conservation – the preservation from loss, damage, or neglect. You might have a healthy stand of mature trees, good soil structure, or rare and desired plants or animals on site - do your best to leave them undisturbed and invest in their protection.

It is far more effective and ultimately far less expensive to conserve the healthy than to repair the degraded.

II. Do no Harm

I think we can all agree that a number has already been done to the environment, so be thoughtful in your attempt to help restore the damage. Let’s not fool ourselves: whenever we dig a hole to plant a tree, pull out an invasive plant, apply an herbicide, or put into motion any “restoration plan” we are disturbing the system. Take the time to understand the life history of the species you intend to plant, ask yourself if pesticide or herbicide is the only (best) answer, and always be open to looking at different tools, techniques, and alternatives. If you have the choice between a permanent application and one that can be reevaluated and adjusted with changing conditions, choose the one that can be changed.

III. Restore Primary Processes and Function

Nature can be a resilient and active partner in its healing if we put our efforts into repairing its ecological organs as opposed to giving it transfusions to treat its symptoms. Nutrient Cycling, Energy Capture, and the Water Cycle are the organs that drive and facilitate life and longevity in the living organism that is the environment.

IV. Ask the Right Questions

Be careful if you only have a hammer in your restoration tool box or every system and situation will look like a nail.

Each system and site is unique and will require different treatments, different sets of tools, and different questions asked in their evaluation.
What did the site look like historically (plant community, coverage, channel type, etc)?
How was it been altered?
Are there reference sites that can be studied for desired communities and function?
What were the natural disturbances at this site (flooding, fire, drought, etc.) and are they still functioning?
How does this particular ecosystem work to repair itself?
What ecological principles should be applied to the site to restore the organs that make this system function?
You cannot find the answers for your site if you never ask the question!

V. Expand your Vision

Whether you are looking at restoring one acre or one thousand you need to lift your gaze up from your particular site and take long hard look at the greater landscape (look to your neighbors’ property, look upstream and downstream, and look at the watershed in which your project lies). Ask yourself if the degradation on your site is linked to that of the greater landscape (seed dispersal, erosion or sedimentation, habitat, etc.). Degradation needs to be addressed at its source or you will be fighting a losing battle.

Fixing the paint job on a burning car isn’t going to help get you down the road. Put out the fire!

VI. Set Objectives

You need to account for the economic, social, and biological constraints for your project. Be realistic about what you should expect and how long it will take to happen. One common misconception is that once the tree starts are in the ground and the seed has been sown we have a functioning ecosystem. It may take decades for your plantings to fulfill their function of building the soil, stabilizing the river bank, or provide viable habitat or cover. Tree mortality and channel migration across a floodplain are natural processes and should be expected. Expect change and expect the unexpected. Give yourself room to observe the fruit of your efforts and adjust.

We might not get the land back to the way it was, but seek to place it on a trajectory towards an ecologically sound and viable future.

VII. Rebuild with Vegetation

The correct mix, application, and distribution of plants is vital to restoring most degraded sites. Plantings can protect a site from erosion, build soil, increase nutrient and water capture, increase habitat, and can be used to beneficially address a number of issues. Plantings can alter the microclimate and conditions of degraded sites in a stepwise fashion to slowly shift and put your project site on a stable, sustainable trajectory.

VIII. Partner with Nature

Up until the 1970’s, large pieces wood were being removed from rivers to “improve fish passage.” For decades Smokey the Bear exhorted us with the saying, “Only you can prevent forest fires!” What time and study of the natural world has revealed to us, however, is that both large wood in rivers and forest fires play vitally important roles in the environment. Fires make available nutrients stored in plants, release seed, and facilitate succession of different plants. Floods scour the ground while depositing nutrients, vegetative starts, and seed into floodplains and riparian zones.

Take time to learn about natural processes, their ecosystem functions, their benefits and how to work with them in the restoration of your site.

IX. Erect no Monument to Your Own Glory

Despite our best efforts to make the environment as static and ordered as ourselves, Mother Nature doesn’t seem to have gotten the message. We erect monuments to our engineering and design prowess by cabling trees in rivers to ensure the perpetuity of our master plans. It just takes one flood, fire, or drought to remind up how small our plans really are and how wild and dynamic the environment truly is. River channels will meander, banks will be eroded and built, and wood and boulders will be deposited where the river wills. Anticipate and embrace the unpredictability and living vibrancy of the environment, because you will be sorely disappointed if you attempt to take the wild out of the wilderness.

X. Live and Enjoy the Land

It can be hard to maintain a balance in the face of such pressing environmental loss and need. What is as important as being on the ground working to improve damaged systems is getting out into nature and reveling in its beauty and wonder. Let the trout excite your spirit and the mountains repair the frayed nerves of life and work.

Edward Abbey (1927-1989) the author and wilderness philosopher put it best when he said:

"Do not burn yourself out. Be as I am-a reluctant enthusiast... a part time crusader, a half-hearted fanatic. Save the other half of yourselves and your lives for pleasure and adventure. It is not enough to fight for the land; it is even more important to enjoy it. While you can. While it is still there. So get out there and mess around with your friends, ramble out yonder and explore the forests, encounter the grizz, climb the mountains. Run the rivers, breathe deep of that yet sweet and lucid air, sit quietly for a while and contemplate the precious stillness, that lovely, mysterious and awesome space. Enjoy yourselves, keep your brain in your head and your head firmly attached to your body, the body active and alive, and I promise you this much: I promise you this one sweet victory over our enemies, over those deskbound people with their hearts in a safe deposit box and their eyes hypnotized by desk calculators. I promise you this: you will outlive the bastards."

Special thanks to Professors Stan Gregory and Paul Doescher of Oregon State University, whose insightful instruction and patient answering of my incessant questions were the catalist for much of this blog.

Restoring our hope...

Where have gone the buffalo in their millions covering the plains? Where are the ancient costal sentries of the Pacific North West, two meter in diameter and 50 meters tall? Where are the runs of salmon so thick that "one could walk across the Puget Sound?" Our world is changing. Some of the shift is natural, the growth and dynamics of this living organism that is the environment. While some of this change is due to man and our desire to dominate and to use without though for tomorrow. When the degradation of this world is examined, it can overwhelm the senses and suffocate hope. I don't know if we can turn around this pattern of drain and degradation, but I ask you to join me. Join me in integrity, in humility, in action, and even in hope. I ask YOU as I ask myself to be true to your beliefs. If this world is precious to you, if you share in the desire to protect the treasure that is the diversity of the natural world, join with me in being an agent of creation.

While there are technical manuals and scientific papers galore on ecological restoration, the purpose of this blog is to break the philosophies, concepts, and tools of restoration down for the dedicated individual. One doesn't need a degree to protect and restore the environment (I'm not diminishing formal training but speaking against excuses and apathy). So please join me in learning and acting for a sound and sustainable future.

Aldo Leopold summed up our unique opportunity succinctly when he wrote:

“Acts of creation are ordinarily reserved for gods and poets, but humbler folk may circumvent this restriction if they know how. To plant a pine, for example, one need be neither god nor poet; one need only own a good shovel. By virtue of this curious loophole in the rules, any clodhopper may say: Let there be a tree—and there will be one.”
-- A Sand County Almanac, 1949