Permaculture On Islands

At a glance..

Here you will find a collection of pamphlets which talk about permaculture on low islands, high islands, and granitic landscapes.

The details..

Permaculture on Low Islands - IV is one of the 15 pamphlets in the Permaculture Design Course Series written by Bill Mollison. This particular book deals with designing sustainable systems for small, residual islands that have very little fresh water catchment and finite storage capacity. The author explains how fresh water sits atop a saltwater base, making it essential to measure available freshwater levels carefully.

The book also highlights how pollution can damage this fragile ecosystem's delicate balance, emphasizing the importance of using dry toilets instead of septic tanks. Since such islands' demand for designers who specialize in atoll marine island design has increased significantly over time, this guide offers valuable insights into efficient ways to utilize scarce resources like freshwater.

Mollison discusses various strategies that are useful when dealing with aridity issues prevalent among low-lying coral sand cays or atolls where rain penetrates very little due to platen layers formed by calcareous sands combined with phosphates mined from sea bird manure deposits.

Moreover, he sheds light on human intervention as being responsible for bringing big trees like coconuts onto these tiny islands since they cannot establish themselves without help due to their shallow-rooted nature caused by platen layers' presence.