 Good to see you. I know for most of us it's a quite summery day, so I'm grateful that you are taking your time to join us in this fireside chat. People are joining. Can anybody hear me? Yes, hello. OK, hello. Good to have you here. We will wait a little bit for more people to join before we start. Thank you all for joining. Start the presentation because we will listen to some beautiful guitar play from John D. Liu, the founder of the ERC. Can everyone see my screen? Can you see my screen? I can't see the screen, actually. Maybe you can. Oh, here we go. Yeah, yeah. That's great. That's great. I'm not sure what happened, but I see. And it's a really exciting day today because we're having the first camp from the Altiplano in Spain. The camp coordinator is going to share with us what has happened, what is happening now, and what's going to happen in the future. So we're so happy that you're here, and I hope you enjoyed the music. I've been practicing a little bit, and I'm always playing the same thing, but it's starting to be interesting to me. And the camps movement is growing. The official launch of the ecosystem restoration decade was launched by the United Nations. And the camp movement is growing, and I hope you're enjoying it, and I hope we'll just keep getting better. Thanks so much for being here. Take it away, Inga. Thank you, Joan. Thank you for the opportunity. And for your words to this fireside chat. My name is Inga Karkov. I will be your host for tonight. And today we have the fireside chat with John D. Liu, the founder of the ecosystem restoration camps, and Sylvia, the camp manager from Camp Altiplano in Spain. Just some house rules. Please hold your question until after Sylvia's presentation. We want to make it a little bit of an interaction Q&A session. So you can ask your question by raising your hands. There is a button in your Zoom. You can click on Reactions, and then you see the button Raise Your Hands, and we will give you the opportunity to ask your question to Sylvia in person. Just for you to know, this session will last for about an hour, but feel free to stay for that. I have an hour or so because we will leave it open for an open discussion. So before we will go to Sylvia, I will share some camp news with you. The camp experience, Camp Hotlum in Manchester in California will host a release party in the 18th of June until the 20th of June. So if you're interested or you're nearby, please go to our website and go to the Event Calendar, and you can see their experience there. Then Camp Coyote will host a free event from the 11th to the 13th of June. So for them the same, if you're interested, go to our website and have a look. Then Camp Greenbub, who has been here with us for the last session, they have the Eden Festival of Action from the 27th of June until the 4th of July. And just for you to know, Camp Verslée and Camp Albeba in France and Egypt have an ongoing camp experience. So please go to our website to see if you're able to join one of these great ecosystem restoration experiences. Camp News, Camp People's Coast in Gambia, which is a seed camp. They just started setting up their first tree nursery. So we are very excited to see how that will develop. And Camp Hotlune received a 40 square feet of solar hot water panels for their showers and hand washing. They are living quite remotely and have very little infrastructure. So this means that they will be able to host more people in the future. So I'm very excited about that. And Camp Verslée in France will be part of a French-German documentary about ecosystem restoration. And they have been picked by a filmmaker who received a grant to make a documentary about ecosystem restoration. And they will be started filming in June. So I hope to see the results very soon. Then Camp Hotlune, Pachecuti and Paradise follows an infrastructure design course. And this really, their, well, Pachecuti and Hotlune are more seed camps and paradise are more established that they are really looking for to define their question, their how to make sure that they will get the right infrastructure that they actually need so they can host campers in the future. Then Camp Béli Bola, began a project to introduce orchid plant structures into the Analog Force Collection. Sri Lanka is known to have 199 orchids, including 55 endemics. And they just started a pilot to introduce them into their Analog Forest. So we will keep you updated about this news. Then we are going over to the guest of tonight. I asked Sylvia to send over some drone footage for us to see what the site of Camp Altaplano looks like. Personally, I have never been. So I'm very curious what Sylvia has to share. But they are situated in Spain, in Murcia. And the camp itself is five hectares, and it's a plot in the middle of the 1500-hectare farm that is transforming from a biological farm into a regenerative farm. And they are one of, they are our first ecosystem restoration camps and are working now for over three years. And they are the first camp that also collected some data. So I'm very curious how things have been developed. And without further ado, I think it's a good to ask Sylvia if she can start her presentation. She asked me if she can share her screen herself. So I will be stopped sharing. So let's see how that works. Yes, and we can bring it back. Welcome Sylvia, good to see you. Hello, thank you Inge for the nice introduction and John for the music. And it's really nice to see a lot of faces. Some of them I've seen before, and that's also really nice. I'm gonna start sharing the screen. If anything doesn't work, just unmute yourself and let me know. And you should be able to see the screen by now, if I'm not wrong. So this is going to be a bit of a story about what happened at camp since the beginning and indeed what's happening now, like Inge already announced. So we're gonna talk a bit about the buildings at camp, the earthworks, so everything related with rainwater harvesting in the ground, the management of the ground cover, which is kind of the core of what's happening at camp, and the agroforestry system and the reforestation efforts. Where are we located? We are more or less in that area of Spain. So it's the, yeah, it's the south of Spain, but inland. We are on a plateau, so we are at 1,100 meters above the sea level, which makes it a very special place because it's a Mediterranean climate. We're in the south of Spain, but we're also very high. So we have really hot and dry summers, but we also have really cold winters. It snows every year, many, many days of frost and a lot of wind, which makes it very harsh conditions for agriculture. This is a satellite image of the area of camp before it was camp. So as Inge said, it's an area of five actor in this semi-arid plateau, at 1,100, 1,200 meters above sea level. We have very little rainfall, maybe between 250 and 350 per year. And it used to be a cereal field. So we are inside the farm of La Junquera, which is a larger farm, which is now a regenerative farm, which has turned from being fully grains farm, cereal farm to a diversified one. And camp is part of this whole process. And here is an image of the design that was done and it's kind of showing almost everything that is happening at camp at the moment. So we have an area with ponds on the left side, which is a riparian area. And we've been working with planting native species in that area and keep it as a natural area. There's swales that are crossing the whole area to harvest rainwater. And there's the ever forestry system with the core crop, which is almond trees. And then you see all the different buildings, which I'm gonna show you more in depth. So when everything started in 2017, there was nothing as you saw in the picture. So the volunteers that started here had to not only work the land and prepare the land, but also create a space for them to be able to live there and to even just have a snack and some shade while they were working there. So on the left side, you see the kitchen, which is made of wood, cob and straw bales. And on the right side is what we call the roundhouse, which used to be a shelter for shepherds possibly. So it was building in ruins, which has been fixed with stones and also straw bales and cob. And here you see the roundhouse as it is today on the right side. And on the left side is on the left side, it's the second building that we have to host people, which is a space for six to eight people in a shared dorm. And it's also made of straw bales and it's covered with a canvas. And this winter we installed a fireplace and a new roof. So it's very well insulated. It keeps really nicely heat in winter and it's great that finally people can stay over at camp even during the winter. One big problem that we had there was that there was no water, but we just finished building a water deposit that currently we're filling up with water from the farm, which is four kilometers away from camp. And the idea is also to install rain gutters and to be able to harvest the rain water from the buildings. And then the earthworks. You see here again, a picture of camp and the arrows are indicating the direction of the water flow. So the slope basically of the land. And the idea of the earthworks is basically to use all the water that you get throughout the year and store as much as possible in your land. As I said, we have very little water and even more problematic is the fact that it's mainly throughout a few months of the year, more or less between October and April or May, which means that all of the summer months, there's no rainfall and everything that grows here relies on rainfall. So the idea of the swales and the ponds, you see on the left side three of the ponds and now there's two more that have been dug in 2019. And you see if you can, I guess you do see my arrow and then you see these are the swales. So it's trenches in the ground that collect all the rainwater and redistribute it throughout the land, which means that indeed we have an increased infiltration of water, which means that the groundwater table can rise and there's more humidity in the soil, more water available for the plants. And this is just to give you an idea of what you can think of when you work with your land with the rainwater harvesting. This is a map of the broader catchment, which means when you see this red line here and the dark green line here is the line of the ponds. So this area is more or less the area of camp. And this map shows that basically all of the rainfall that falls in this being in the inside of the green line is ending up eventually here at camp because of the slopes. So of course it doesn't all end up there because there's infiltration, there's plants, there's evaporation, but these ponds have been built because they can collect actually a lot of water from the broader catchment. And this is the design of a swale. On the left side, you see what's the idea of it. So we have a slope and a trench that cuts perpendicular to the slope. And you can take advantage of this area to plant a variety of things. Because think of, for example, you have a cereal field and then you dig a swale, you're losing land that it's not arable anymore, that you're not cultivating grains anymore. But what does the swale does to my harvest that it decreases? Decreases the profit with an ability to drought, which means that I might reduce my harvest in a way because the surface that I'm growing, it's smaller, but at the same time, because I have an increased water infiltration, in dry years, my crop is gonna do better. In addition, you can plant, as I said, different things. At camp we have planted on the inside of the swale aromatics and native perennials, such as Rosemary, Sanculin and Lavender, and also shrubs and small trees that are good both for pollinators, for birds, like junipers, Gatama Black Othorn, Gatama, it's also a nitrogen fixer, and white pistachios. So that the trees on the opposite side can take advantage with deeper roots of the water which is sinking deeper, and the bushes and aromatics, which are smaller, can access the water more easily. The ponds were the first ones were dug in 2017, and they are now impermeable just thanks to the clay, which is in the ground, in the soil of the area, it's very high in clay. So throughout time, basically, there has been a layer of clay covering the bottom of the ponds, which make them impermeable. They're currently quite low in water, and what we think is probably because this year we hadn't had any heavy, really extremely heavy rainfall. So the idea of the ponds is that they fill up with great rainfall events. This year it has rained quite a lot, but more spread out throughout the year. And this one here that you see in the picture is the biggest one that we have, and then there's five more, which are smaller, and three of them have water throughout the whole year, while the last two are basically dry now in summer and filling up again in winter. Why the ponds? In terms of biodiversity, it's been a massive change. I'm here since a year and a half, more or less, so I haven't seen the difference at the beginning, but I do see the difference between this area in the farm and other areas where there is no water. So there is an increase in the amount of the richness of plant species. There's also an improvement in the soil because thanks to all this biomass around the ponds, there's increased soil stability, water infiltration, and nutrient cycling capacity. And also the plants around the ponds can establish deeper root systems, basically allowing for more plants to grow deeper and to be stronger in periods of drought. Also we see loads of animals around the ponds. There's loads of frogs, snakes, birds of all kinds coming to the ponds, foxes, wild boars, deers. So it really creates a, it's a focus for biodiversity. It creates a new habitat, basically. And then we moved on to, well, the volunteers that were here at the time moved on to work in the soil to break the compaction. So you see on the left side, there's a picture of a soil profile of camp where we see the first maybe 15 centimeters of really nice and soft soil. And then after that, a layer which looks like rock, basically. This is caused by the work of machinery. With a tractor, for example, you go and plow the land, you soften and aerate and oxygenate the first 20 centimeters. But below that, because of the weight of the machinery, you're creating what is called the hard pen. So a layer through which roots and water and air cannot pass, making it very hard for the plants to grow. So what's been done is with a machinery called a deep reaper, which is more or less like this. This is the yeoman's plow that is designed exactly for this purpose. So it's basically knives that cut through the ground and don't turn it, don't lift it, don't try and put upside down everything which is in the ground, but just create a cut through which roots, water and air can infiltrate. So breaking, slowly breaking this compacted layer. And then they spread compost on the whole area of camp. In a part, it was manure, animal manure. And on another part, it was pellets. So it's basically the same, but it's dried out. So it adds the same type of nutrients, but you don't have the same texture changing the soil. But also it's much more expensive. So that's why only on a part of camp, it was spread out. And then a mix of cover crops, 30 different species, mainly cereals and nitrogen-fixing plants, leguminous like patch, for example, and peas, because they function together very well. The nitrogen fixers are making the nitrogen available for the other plants that are growing like wheat, for example, which has a deeper root system, that's more capable of breaking this compacted layer in the soil. So basically you create a symbiosis which works very well. And all of the other species were also thought for different purposes. For example, species that are good at attracting pollinators. This year, we have been adding compost. We haven't been adding compost to camp, but we've been experimenting with compost seeds and with urine because we have compost toilets for the volunteers, which means that we separate pea and poo and the poo for the moment is still there. And what we do with the peas that we diluted one to 10 with water. And then we use it as a fertilization, so fertilizing and irrigating the trees at the same time. And then moving on to the management of the ground cover. The idea is to keep a permanent ground cover to protect the soil, to avoid erosion. And in 2019, they brought in sheep from a shepherd that works here on the farm. And last spring, we brought cows to camp that stayed more or less for two months. In the map, you can see the areas through which we moved them, so we couldn't put them where we have the trees because they would eat them. So it was only areas without trees. And we were moving them with electric fences every three to four days, depending on the size of the area, depending on the amount of food they had. And we, so this was from April until June more or less. So then we had the whole period of summer with the soil left after the cows kind of bare and a girl that came here, Nerea, she came here in September as a volunteer and she did a study about the effects of the experiment with the cows at camp. And she basically saw that on most levels, the nutrient cycling and the soil health was better in the areas that were not raised, which actually makes a lot of sense because summer, the soil is left kind of bare, the manure from the cows doesn't receive any rain, so it's not really processed by the biological activity in the soil, and it kind of fossilized on the ground and stayed there. So our idea is now to try actually in the end of the summer, maybe with the horse or maybe with the cows again. But the good thing, for example, is that the plant species that we're growing in those areas, there was much more variety in the areas graced by the cows. So different impacts, different results. And then the agroforestry system. So this is a scheme of what the agroforestry system looks in a part of camp. You see the green dots, which is the corn crop, as I mentioned, it's almond trees, because it's a crop which is very, very, very big. It's a crop which is grown in the area. Loads of farms are growing almond trees and it's a drug resistant, it's adapted to the region. So the idea was to create a system that makes sense in this area and that takes what is already existing and adapts it to what we want. So the core is the almond trees. Then there's this tree, which is called black locus, which is a nitrogen-fixing tree, which is planted more or less every four almond trees. And the idea is that it produces biomass and being a nitrogen-fixer that biomass can be reintroduced in the soil and act as basically fertilizer. Then there's a few in the areas without the black locus. There were planted shrubs, which are also nitrogen-fixing shrubs and are existing in the area. Well, are native species. And then you see these lines in between some of the lines of trees and these lines are aromatics. So we have lavender, thyme and rosemary. And the idea of these lines is that they are alternate so that in the moment you want to come in the field with a tractor, for example, to harvest the almonds or with the horse to cut the grasses or whatever, you can still act on the trees without damaging the aromatics. And in the plunder was also a chicken tractor. We've had one for a while, Fox ate the chicken. So now we are in a bit of a break from the chicken tractor. We don't want to feed the Fox more chickens. We have a few turkeys at the moment at camp that just, they were gifted to us. So we'll see if we can have a turkey tractor. This is how the system was planted in a part with an excavator and then the trees were planted by hand. And in other parts with this machinery that you attached to a tractor, the base digs a trench. So you just put the trees inside, stuck them down to avoid air pockets in the roots. And it's a quite effective and efficient way. Now we're working a lot on a vegetable garden which was started at the beginning by the volunteers and that was kind of abandoned in the period of no volunteers here at camp and the change of management. We're irrigating in with the water from one of the ponds which is pumped up with a solar pump. And then by gravity just flows to camp with clear irrigation. And we have experimented with microorganisms reproduction, compost teas and no teal in the vegetable garden. And then there's this part of fruit trees that we have where we take advantage of the wastewater from the kitchen which is diverted into different pipes and it spreads out through different branches so that it can water different trees. This is a quince. And what you see behind which is a pallet is was made by volunteers that were here in January with the idea to protect the trees from the wind because these trees that we planted in this area are a bit more delicate are more delicate than almond trees. They're Mediterranean, but the cold might be a problem for them. That's why we build some wind protections for them and we make sure that they have enough water. And then the reforestation part is a big part of our work. You see on the left two different areas where we've worked on the farm. One is a scrub land basically, very dry. And what you see below is the area between the ponds. So it's a more humid area. There's the groundwater level is very high, very shallow. So we planted different species in those areas. And on the right side you see more or less where they're located on the farm. To select species, when we work with reforestation, we try and look at what's existing in the area. So we take a reference. Here on the farm, there's a Mediterranean pristine forest with loads of oak trees, junipers, rosemary. So basically we're only working with these species that we're already find here. And the majority we get from a nursery, a local nursery. And we are starting to try and propagate some of the plants, some of them through cuttings, for example, tamarisk. Some of them we do direct sowing like the acorn, which is actually quite good to work with direct sowing rather than plants from a nursery because of the root system, which develops straight and deeper if you grow directly from an acorn in the soil instead of taking the trees that come from trees from a nursery. So here you see also that we tried to work with different levels so that we create, we bring in the system all the different layers up to the climax, which is the pine and the oak, the climax vegetation, but we also try and create indeed a complex system that has all the different layers. And these are the species that we planted in the wetland area. So it's ash, poplars, willows, and tamarisk. And here it's also in the different types of trees, different growths, different heights. And what we want to do also and what we've been doing is not only working on these five actors of land and within the farm of La Conquera, but also collaborating with different farms in the region and basically be kind of a hub for volunteers to come here learn about landscape restoration, ecosystem restoration, and then help farmers in the area that maybe have the land, maybe have the interest in working differently and in doing reforestation work, but don't really have the money or cannot or don't have the hands, enough hands to do this. So this year, for example, we've worked in three or four different farms here. We were planting pine trees and Fognicabra, which is the wild pistachio on a farm which is an hour away from here with Antonio Marandi, the man in the picture. It's his family farm and he basically, it's mainly an almond farm, mainly almond trees, and he's already been working on creating ponds on doing reforestation efforts. So it's also really nice for people that come here to go and see other farms and it's always a really nice moment of sharing and creating together and expanding the horizons from what we have here. This is, I think, nice to look at this in the way that it shows us everything that's happening at camp in a very visual way. So I'm trying to keep a record of, I can access this link, yes. I'm trying to keep a record of everything that we do at camp in the different areas so that we can understand better the impacts of soil management on the land, so different management on the land. For example here, you see, as I mentioned, there's a part that has been during the first year, there's a part that was fertilized with manure directly and a part that was fertilized with pellets. You see the green areas have been fertilized with manure and the red ones with pellets. And then we can look at, for example, the organic matter content that we took samples last autumn and we sent them to a lab. And we see that in different areas we have different contents. Red is the lowest and blue is the highest. So you can really see that the areas that have been, for example, that have received pellets instead of manure, there's kind of a difference. Then we have the red area, so the lowest content, which is what we call the control area. So we're not doing anything in that piece of land. We're just keeping it as a reference to see the differences. And then you clearly see that the area of the ponds where we left the natural vegetation growing, we haven't worked with machinery at all. We've now been working with referstations. So replanting is the one with the highest organic matter content. Of course, also the one with the highest moisture content in the soil because of the location. But just this is a very nice way to see visually what's happening. And for example, areas where we spread the composting. So here, which is the area behind the kitchen where we have the fruit trees. And I think it's a very helpful tool to see what's happening and why. Let me go back to the presentation. And what we've seen with everything that we've been doing until now. As Inge mentioned, this has been, well, here at camp there have been studies already since the beginning. So since 2017 and 18 to evaluate the state of the land. So here you see the organic matter content of samples that were taken in 2018. Again, it's in colors. So the red is lowest, yellow is a bit higher and green is the highest organic matter content. And this year, well, last autumn we took samples again and you saw on the previous map of the different areas. But you see, if we compare the same area, we have overall an increase. In every area, we have an increase of organic matter content. So in this sense, we know that definitely there has been a change and an improvement. Now we're working on the monitoring framework that the foundation has developed so that it can be applied to all camps. We don't have results yet, but we've seen, we've done the water infiltration tests. We have just set the T-back test to see the composition rates so that year by year we can keep an eye on the differences and what's happening. And I would like to leave you with these images, which are satellite images of the area of Kemp. The first one on the left is from 2014. So Kemp started in 2017 and on the right you see a picture from 2019. They're both from the month of August and I think this picture says a lot about what's happening there and the input of everything that we're working with and the efforts of all these years. So this is it. And I think we have space for questions. Thank you Sofia. Thank you Sofia. Applauding for all the work. It's amazing to see indeed a lot of transformation. Thank you so much. Yeah, thanks to all the people that have been working here since the beginning and all the volunteers that are here now, it's really nice to have all these people coming and going and bringing in their work. I can imagine probably not a day is the same. No. No. Great. Excellent. Does anyone has a question for Sylvia? Personally curious, what has been the biggest challenge for you since you've been at Campbell's Plano? I think first understanding what's happening here because there's a lot of things. Well, I think the fact that it's a very complex project where there's many things happening at once. On one side, the management of the land. On the other side, the management of the volunteers, infrastructure. So I think the fact that you need to manage the multitude of issues. And also, for example, the fact that we, or at least I would like to avoid having any machinery going on the land, but it's still, it's five actors. So it's still quite big, at least for me. So indeed, without the hands of the volunteers being possible, luckily they are here and they come and go, but it needs a thinking of ways to work on the land that involve no machinery, but they're also possibly not destroying the back of everybody which is here. I think that's quite a challenge. Okay, thank you. I see Michael Polarski raises hands for a question. Yes, Sylvia, wondering if you are using any mineral fertilizers, mineral amendments. You're using organic matter amendments, but minerals. Ashes, that's the only minerals we've been using at the moment. So the manure that was spread during the first year was basically animals manure and husks, rice husks, is how you call it, like the peel of the rice. And the pellets were also from animal manure, simply dried. And this year, for example, with the compost, what we use is compost that we're making. So it's all organic matter. There's no minerals in there. Molasses, ashes, and I think that's it. So ashes in a way are the only minerals that we're using. And the land here, it's very high in clay and it's also very alkaline. So I've been looking, I don't know exactly what you're thinking about, but I've been looking at a few things and it seems like in this type of soils, it wouldn't be, but I guess, yeah, you can look for the appropriate one for your land. I don't know if you have any advice. Have you made soil tests? You could send me a soil test or several from the place. That would be really nice. We have them from 2018 because the tests that we did last year were only about organic matter content. So we don't have an evaluation of minerals and components in the ground. But I guess it probably didn't change too much from 2018. Yeah, yeah. If you could send me that information or put it on your site somehow, the soil test. Yeah, we might, yes. Myself or I'll have ideas. That would be great. Thanks. Great. Thank you. I see a question in the 12th chat from Louise Fett. How is the response of the neighboring farmers? So the closest neighboring farm is Alfonso, who's the owner of the land and he's the one that agreed on starting this project here. So that's a quite positive response. But I think that the nicest, well, the nicest, the most interesting response is the response of people that work on the farm. So like tractor drivers and anybody that has been living in the area since forever and has always seen a very different type of agriculture. And many times they come there and they look at the land and like, Sylvia, what are you doing here? We're gonna take you all down. Look at all this grass growing there. It's full of stuff. This is not good. And one time the guy, for example, they came with a tractor to do the deep reaping. So this breaking of the soil, he was saying the same and then he started working the land and he looked at the soil and was like, wow, it's actually a really nice soil here. So that was, I think a really nice contact with these people that from the outside, they look at it and I think it's kind of madness because here there's this culture of plowing very often, having the fields very clean to avoid the competition of plants in summer, which is indeed a thing also partially. But then indeed when they look at the soil and see that it's doing much better, I think there's a bit of thought there, hopefully. Aha, yeah, interesting. Thank you, Rob Wheeler. Thank you. I'm Rob Wheeler. I represent the work at the United Nations. I have a number of questions about the logistical labor parts of the project. And thank you first. This is fantastic presentation and a wonderful project. My first question is how many people volunteers you have working there on average are most of them long-term or short-term volunteers? How long do they stay? Do you have any compensation for the volunteers that come? What's a budget cost to run a project like this per year? And do you have a farm manager that manages both the restoration parts and the growing parts of it? Thank you. Thank you. So as I said, I'm here since a year and a half. And the first six months, we've had barely any person because it was a hard lockdown. So there were basically two volunteers in total for six months. And but since September, we had a more of a constant flow. And let's say from two to six volunteers, depending on the moment, I would say that most of them are staying for two months on average, but then there's also some people that come for three days or a week. And there's one guy, Gabby, who's been here now for I think nine months probably. He has also a side project, which is actually his own project on communication about regenerative farming more to young people. So he's leaving here and he's permanently at camp, which is really nice. We actually asked for a contribution from the volunteers that come, which is something I would like to change. So we're looking now into the possibility of entering them. It's not called any more European Voluntary Service, but this European Union program that basically gives pocket money to volunteers and also money to the project so that you can keep running with, because we're calculating that more or less with like costs of the gas for the car, the maintenance of the buildings, the gas for cooking, everything, the materials, it's probably around 300 euros a month to have a volunteer with us. And at the moment we're asking a contribution of 100 euros. 50 is going to camp and 50 is going to the farm of La Junquera because they are also using facilities in the farm. But yeah, so hopefully this will change and farm managers you're asking for camp, for the area of camp, you mean who's managing the whole thing? No. So at the beginning, it was a group of volunteers. I think it was around seven people. They were, most people were here for more or less a year and then were the short term volunteers swapping around. But since last year, they've decided to change the management. So they hired me and I am the only person who has a big position to run. On the camp. I'm supported by Alfonso Yannick who are the owners of the farm, by other people on the farm and by the volunteers. But I'm managing everything from the volunteers to the agricultural part. That's why it's complex. Thank you, Sylvia. I can imagine that it must be complex. Let's work. Thank you. And exciting. And exciting. Yes. Yes. Faye, would you like to ask your question? You are muted. Nice, thank you. Yeah, Sylvia, that was so good to hear all about everything that you've been doing. Really, yeah. So like a tiny taste of what you're doing and yeah. I was curious to understand a bit more about the holistic grazing. I didn't quite catch whether it had been successful in your context or not. Yeah. Yeah, I don't think I can give a really straightforward question, but basically the analysis that was done, the cows were grazing for two months, April till June. And then the study was done in September and analyzing basically soil litter and decomposition rate, nutrient cycling, water infiltration, capacity of the soil to recover from erosion events. And it seemed that it didn't really bring a positive result, but also thinking that it was compared with areas that were not grazed, but also where the grasses were not cut, where nothing was done. So they were left completely unmanaged in a way. And then of course, if you think about it, it makes a lot of sense because those areas had a thick layer of vegetation that stayed there throughout the whole summer, like mulch basically, and the grazed areas didn't. So in terms of nutrient cycling and basically capacity of the soil to recover after erosion and all of these factors, in September, so after the summer, it seemed like it hadn't been a successful experiment. So the idea that we have is that one thing could be doing it in a different season. So just before the rains, so then you leave the ground cover in summer and then you have cows grazing, the rain's coming, you can sow new cover crops right after and then you have the manure and the rain and that should actually give a boost to the system. So that was one idea or that we didn't do it the right way. So we let the cows stay for too long in some places. And also in some areas they stayed while it was raining or right after the rains, maybe the soil was too soft and they compacted it, could be many things. But the way we did it, exactly the way we did it wasn't great. So now we know. That's also a wonderful insight. Yeah, I'm really curious to hear what will come from it. Because I mean, that's the whole thing about the ecosystem restoration camps movement as a global living lab that you experiment with this and we'll see what comes next. And that's what's really exciting. So I'm looking forward to hearing. Yeah. Yeah, us too. Tothly, would you like to ask your question? If you will. Otherwise, we will go over to another question that Peter has asked before in the chat. And do you think the ponds are less full even after a year with rain? Less full, yeah, even after a year with rain because of the increased permeability of the soil. That's also something we, I'd like to think that's part of the reason, but I'm not sure. Because actually the area of camp where there's definitely a higher infiltration in the soil. It's in a way very small part of the surface runoff that ends up in the ponds. There's a very big part that comes from a road and another almond field, which is plowed quite often. So it's very bare soil. So it might be that partially because of that. But yeah, I think the reason is indeed that there hasn't been a very big rainfall. So then all the rainfall that we had was in small amounts and it first infiltrated in the soil rather than overflowing and running off and handing up in the ponds. That's I think most possible. All right, thanks. Tuxley, can you hear us if you still have your question and go for it? Otherwise I will lower the hand in a bit. I saw another question in the chat from Louise Fett. Is there any financial support from the Spanish government? Not that we are receiving at the moment, but for example, we're looking into having my wage covered through what is called emplea verde. So it's a financing from the region, actually. The region of Mocio where we're located to support work in agricultural areas, rural environments, young people, women, all this like more, how do you say, marginated groups. So that's one option that we're looking into. Right. Can I ask something else? Yes. Yes, I did to this. Hi. Yeah, great result and compliments for doing all this. Of course. But I was just wondering, can't you sort of make advertisement within Spain like common lands doing as well or in the garden or whatever as something like, you know, you're, you're doing that in public or public interest. You must work on that as well, which of course is difficult when you have to run the whole show yourself. But I think it would be really possible to, to get more attention from people that find this very interesting to see the before and after. That's so impressive always. So that you could have more support, more financial support and, you know, just being able to expand also. So, you know, is there a possibility or maybe even with Willem Ferreira through common land or I don't know, but I think it's worth it. So if it doesn't come from the local government, maybe from, I don't know, some messain us in Spain or. Okay. Yeah, you're absolutely right. There's definitely more, more work that can be done on the side already. Yeah, just being an ecosystem restoration council through the foundation will receive a lot of support. And also the, the, indeed the voice goes out there and there's a, that helps a lot. Yeah, there's, we are in touch every once in a while people contact and they're like, oh, we're, we're putting in touch funders and projects and people that want to give money to plant trees or big companies that are interested in financing this type of projects. So indeed, as you say, there is a lot of interest in that. I'm, yeah, we, I've started looking into all this possibility. It's maybe six months ago or a bit more. So yeah, hopefully at some point I'll find the right directions and yeah. Yeah. It's also important that you can handle it when it does come in and that's, that's. Yeah. Well, so, but then possibly you can have higher, more people. Exactly. And then it makes life easier. I would say a related question. If I can. Yeah. Is you're such a young people. Great. So, you know, we with, for example, we have in Columbia, they're also working with influencers that could be of help that are willing to, you know, that are really thinking about this is it. This is what it should be or whatever. Or so I was thinking, you know, are there people that you could, you know, yeah, I don't know, ask them to make some advertisement for this great movement. Yeah, actually, as I mentioned, that would be one of the volunteers, the one that has been here the longest. So the project he has with two other friends is about communication about regenerative practices on Instagram. They're now making videos and a lot of different things. And they are a bit more in that sense, working with the influencer type of idea and sharing things with them. And they're also working with them. And they're also working with them. And they're also working with them at the farm at camp. And so maybe they are, maybe they're the ones that are going to bring in. Those, that different channel. John is waving. I don't know why John's waving. He wants that. He wants to say something. I'm going to shut up. Okay. Thanks. My, my. What I would like to suggest. Is that she gets Luis vets. Contact information and asks her to become an ambassador. For camp Alta Plano. She's very important person. In the Netherlands. And I think she is a great influencer. And I think it would be wonderful to have this connection. Yeah, but I'm not, I'm not. Yes, I support, but I'm not the influencer that I'm talking about. I support that. I support that. I support that. I support that. I support that. Billions of followers then, and, and lots of money. So that would be. That would be, you know, something like, I don't know. You meet them. You meet them. So yeah. Yeah. I think it's a very good idea. This is because the, the influencers with lots of money. They listened to Luis. Yeah, sometimes. Yes. This is, I think the exact. thing because I think the young people have to take sovereignty, you have to act, you can't wait, you can't give the power to people who are in the status quo and who have money, but you can work with them if they choose to work with you. So the key thing is keep going because the more you do, the more obvious your courage and your determination is and it will pay off. Yeah, I'm sure you can. Well, we'll see what I can do. This is a very good motivating session. I was already telling John, who's been of course one of the most the biggest influencer John, I mean, with your film and the lessons from Los Plateau and that kind of thing. I use it in lectures as well and it's so impressive but this is, you know, then you kind of preach for the converted already and what we need to do is to find somebody that is totally beyond but that is just grasped by the idea and then that they really want to help. Now, of course, I cry with some people like DOB ecology in the Netherlands, for example, but I really mean somebody out of the, you know, out of our holistic bubble, it's much more influential and some people in this world have too much money and have no idea what to do with it. So as long as they can feel good about it, that would even be best. You know, even if it's not huge amounts of money, but something that you could actually do. And another suggestion I had is Tom Crowder from the ETH lab in Zürich. He was a postdoc in a lab and Tom Crowder, look at the Crowder lab. They work on soil, they work on mapping, they're looking always for people to work with them. They do a lot of citizen science type of work. So I would try to see if you can connect up. Have a look at the Crowder lab website. It's very interesting to see they're working together with the World Resource Institute. They're funded by DOB ecology but also by big messainists in United States and they work with Google and blah blah he's very much. I think the foundation is already working with them, right? That's correct. We're partnering with them. All the camps are going to be integrated into their restore platform, which should really help. They had a great idea because it's already happening. Yeah, I didn't know that. Tom knows a lot of influencers as well, I'm sure. So just basically be blunt and ask him, say you need some more money because you need to hire a few people and if he can sort of do it for you. All right, we're going to go for it. Yeah, okay. There's one other thing I should say. I'm in Los Angeles trapped by the COVID travel restrictions. Accidentally I was supposed to give some speeches out here and then everything I was here in in late March and everything 2020 and then everything shut down. So I got stuck in California and I was very fortunate to be taken care of by lots of interesting people and we started to communicate with the type of group that you're talking about entrepreneurs and so the Silicon Valley entrepreneurs and Hollywood. So these two things are emerging and of course strangely I also found that California has a lot of its own problems with large numbers of homeless and at the same time the ridiculous affluence and then abject poverty. So it was quite tragic to see that. But this is ending up by finding two ways that California could use restoration because they're experiencing extreme drought and wildfires and this is essentially it seems to me after observing this now for some time early stage desertification because they have removed 95 to 97 percent of the great coastal forest and you can't do that without having serious consequences to the hydrological function. And so just explaining that to them they're shocked to hear these kinds of things but that's the reality. And so there are a number of groups in advertising and in media and in entrepreneurial like venture capital and so on. So this is being discussed but what I find Luis is that it's not a very good idea to pursue these people. It's best if they come to me or you know if they if so that for me I can't spend my time on people who just you know have demands or something about what they would like to see. What I want to do is just keep doing what I do because that's what I have I have control over. And then those people who come to me and they say well we want to support we want to help. They are the only ones I've ever seen actually give money. So that's that's also the group I mean. I mean it's just that they can be grasped by the idea when they see it and that's what you can use to persuade them to be involved but they're not going to demand anything in no way. They're just going to support and be proud of that because they they can't you know. Let me add one more thing we're we're looking at what you what you wrote to me about documenting these things. I've come to another conclusion it's wonderful that there's this vast body of material that I've made over the law the last few decades because I can see that it's being used in universities and in schools and and it's it's very influential but what I think is now necessary is to continuously introduce define and and reinforce because what we see is in science and in policy most of the things that I've been saying for almost three decades have already been incorporated into science and into policy but into action is another another thing. So what what I think we're we're looking at from a media perspective the much of the media world is in a very strange state where there is very high levels of manipulation of the viewer. So if you study the thoughts of Noam Chomsky for manufacture and consent or if you look at what's happening with the political messaging and I mean it's 1984 it's it's terrifying what's going on with this. So but but it's actually not the media it's not the technology it's the people who are guilty of using this in a bad way so the the best case I think is and what's being discussed now is to create a a series of programs which is not so much like a science documentary it's more like creating collective consciousness it's about it's about talking about ideas that are unassailable. So when you when you introduce concepts about evolutionary succession and you talk about what this means that that the processes which we depend on for life come from these these these processes there's no way you can argue the other side if you if you start to argue no we don't need soil fertility or we don't need water or we don't need biodiversity it's ridiculous you know so so everybody should argue from from the point of biodiversity biomass and accumulated organic matter because it can't you know you you can't take the other side but the fact is the fact is that people are focused on things on buying and selling things and so they they're valuing these things higher than the life systems and that's wrong that's just a mistake and so in order to get to the point where people are focused on what's real we need to have a continuing conversation and more and more people need to to present this so that's what i'm trying to do now is create this series where voices from many many people from around the world can contribute to this concept maybe certainly first every month and then maybe every week just constantly create this conversation because the more this conversation ripples out now i can see this from my own work which i would say is you know it's a small step but what happened was when it was presented nobody noticed sort of in the beginning but then gradually more people noticed and more people noticed and more people noticed so it starts to grow so this is what we can do now is grow that sort of amplification of this message and that's that's that's what i'm thinking so i'm if you're if you're keen to work on that louise let's do it we have here in hollywood and in in california many interesting characters who do want to do this so it is moving in this direction thank you john and thank you louise also for the energy and the possibilities for sylvia maybe it's good to have a discussion about it john but there are still some questions for sylvia um one second toxley still have some questions sir mike didn't work so her um here or i don't know if it's he or she excuse me for that and she was he or she is wondering about the natural history of the lands uh the hillslope bear too um i guess of the era surrounding camp um there's good reasons to believe that this area was uh the part of it at least has been forest in the past we have a forest on the land here so it also even if not the whole area was forest but it's still possible and since roman times logging grazing over grazing um has been taken down most of the forest uh and that creates a basically a downward spiral which is reinforcing itself you don't have trees you don't have roots you don't have uh anything able to keep the soil in and there goes the the the generation let's say of the landscape so indeed the hills where we've been working on with it with reforestation which is now as cropland and uh doesn't mean there's nothing there there's loads of interesting thing and and and native species and actually some um botanists from the region found a very rare species in one of in one of those i cannot remember the name but in one of these uh bear hills um so basically it's uh land that has been degraded and we're trying to bring it back to a state of uh climate vegetation if that answered the question thank you um taxis also wondering um that the almond trees are grown without water except swales in california they are very they're a very intensive crop and are the black locus trees copper sites yeah so um like all dryland crops you can you can also grow them with irrigation and they would just do better um but here it's always been a a rain fed area there's no irrigation there's only a very tiny part of the farm that has irrigation so all the crops that grow here the grains the almonds the pistachios everything is only rain fed um so they do release they are adapted and especially it's a local species that we use local varieties um so they don't definitely don't need uh irrigation you you would actually well if you don't have a well drained soil you can actually have more losses from water logging rather than drought apparently thanks um michael polarski you have another question you are you are muted since i just saw majed show up here and majed did you get my those shipment of books i sent you did that ever happen yes thank you they arrived out in germany and i'm waiting um the first one coming from germany to bring them but they are in a safe place and thank you really really i appreciate oh good well i'm glad to hear they arrived it was you know oh that's around the way at any rate so um maybe i could do that for more camps i collect books on useful books um this is great so i had a larger comment and then a more uh pointed question for sylvia the larger comment is that the world is awash in money and funds but uh there needs to be the as john said the uh collective consciousness that that we need to use it for restoration instead of rich people getting richer so how to change we need money reform financial reform in the world on a very large scale and i don't know how to do that but meaning that history shows that eventually that things give and um and things will change and i don't know what form that will take but in the meantime i'm curious if if el toplano is getting funds from ecosystem restoration camps to help with the finances it sounds like your salary is covered by the by the government and then the people are paying to be there is their funds coming how much does erc contribute so actually at the moment we my salary is covered by the foundation by erc and and this is going to be the last year that we're receiving this funding that's why we're looking into the other option like having my salary covered by the government um um so and yeah we are this year for example we're going to receive um 12 000 euros uh possibly possibly 24 let's see how things go and indeed with this that's why we're looking for the other options um we have spent if i'm not wrong like ideally if to to run the project have one person running in the buildings that are according to infrastructure which is working the plants the trees um i think it would be more or less 40 000 euros a year um more or less maybe depending also on for example now because we've been finishing all of the infrastructure which is not completely finished yet but the biggest part has been done so there has been in the past years a lot of money going into that so hopefully it would be less money on that and possibly indeed more on expanding or working with other farms or just doing more land focused activities shall i help you with that answer to silvia yes please so michael uh in the past few years i think a couple of hundreds of thousands of euros went from the ERC foundation to this camp and this is this camp and now has uh it's infrastructure in place and is able to receive people and uh many of what we call volunteers because this is sort of a we call them campers now because we associate volunteers with people who come and just bring their labor they they're willing to pay for their lodging and part of the project too while they're there so it's part of the we hope last year funding model for ERC Altiplano and we we went there Yanhein and I and talked to Alfonso and Silvia and did the math and it looked like it would work and then COVID came so we are still supporting Altiplano because it's the first camp and you can't let that go so uh we'll continue to be there but we hope that the camp model Altiplano proves that it can finance itself because that's when you can go to hundreds of camps around the world and this would be the the leading example that shows how that could work so let's hope COVID disappears very soon it won't but at least becomes manageable and uh that it can start to do that because that will stimulate others to step on and get going because it can fund itself that's our hope mine too yeah well thank you for that explanation that that helps my head but um I just want to announce to John and to the group I I am putting on a 10-day drylands permaculture course uh in October here in West for Western United States particularly it's a in-person course out of that I hope will come a online course that we can get people from around the uh drylands around the world hopefully uh can can step in including ERC people so anyway I'm working on this drylands permaculture course and wanted John to know that and if anybody here in the western west they might contact me at Friends of the Trees thank you all right um my kids my kids is actually from Camp Habiba so hello good to see you hello uh you are doing a great job thank you really for what you are doing and your inspiration for us to follow your uh Arturlano camp uh my question to you uh is that possible to try the moringa trees over there uh are they sensitive to frost because I think they are no they are sensitive to the frost but when it is in summer uh I think they are they can work good and they can feed your your kettles they are they are fast-grower and they are very good in and you can use them for for food for cattle they are very good but then would they would they survive through the winter because we have snow every year and many days of below zero okay if they don't survive at least for this summer uh month is you you have them and there is a lot of things that you can do with the with the moringa and we use also as a good fertilizer a part of it so you mean they could be used also only during summer months and replanting yes yes yes and then they would need water probably they are resilient for for for water and we make a lot of trials here and really they are resilient and they can live without water for a long time nice we will maybe this summer we can try yeah thank you thank you thank you maria good to see you by the way thank you and the question from the chat from Bart Begat is there a danger of wildfires with increased biomass probably why Spanish farmers keep the biomass clean between the trees and that's also true i don't think that's the main reason for the the way the ground is managed in in these areas here specifically in in this farm as far as i know there's not a very high fire as art i mean it could be in a sense that there's really dry summers but maybe possibly exactly because of that there's little rain for this little biomass there's not much wild vegetation growing so it doesn't seem to be an extremely dangerous area but yeah it is also part why farms are managing clearing their land in in certain areas of Mediterranean countries definitely on on a on a larger scale like Monbiot describes well Europe was not historically forested it was a mixed landscape with empty areas kept empty by herbivores it's why in other spaces in in Spain and rewilding Europe they experiment with reintroducing herbivores which are the main fire brigades to prevent mass fires which we noticed in other continents in Australia and California and so on so uh yes it's a fantastic camp and results and you create enormous biomass but in Spain as you know in the three months extremely you can see fire running over the ground with almost no biomass so it's it could be a danger in the future so maybe experimenting with the cattle will reduce the biomass and create open spaces which are kind of natural fire controls in the future it's just an idea yeah yeah that's a good thinking as well if I could say something because California has been experiencing the fires quite a lot and my understanding in Spain was that under Franco they introduced plantation tree planting of Aleppo pine and the Aleppo pine are really subject to actually exploding they they spontaneously combust at a certain temperature so when when the very very hot temperatures happen and maybe there's a lightning strike or something and what happens then is that they explode and when they explode they spread the fire further and further and what's happening in California is an understanding from the indigenous people who for 15 000 years were tending the forests here it is that they were using fire and that there are two types of fire one type of fire is a cool fire which burns through the undergrowth and the second type of fire is a fire that rises up into the canopy and and and it it's it's enormously hot it's different so if you can understand these different things and understand how the moisture is at the surface of the of the soil so when the soil is completely dry and of course especially when there is no vegetative cover then the the temperatures are highly elevated I would actually ask Silvia if measurements of surface temperatures could be taken in the camp especially in control areas in the in the in the neighboring areas where there is no vegetation if you can measure the surface temperatures where there is no vegetation at the same time of day etc and then study what you have changed and measure those temperatures I think you'll find they're 10 to 15 degrees centigrade difference and so this is this is quite extraordinary for a number of things when combined with the the moisture profiles it should tell you quite a lot about what is possible and what is not possible and if you can multiply that those influences having moisture at the surface having more relative humidity in the air and having much lower surface temperatures you get a completely different result so that's one finding from looking at ecosystems around the world and I think that there you have to continuously monitor and assess because there are various possible outcomes and we don't actually know what those outcomes will be so you have to you have to pursue monitoring but it seems to me that in all the places I've seen that have high amounts of organic material higher and higher canopies and lower and lower surface temperatures you get a much better result I jump in right away on that Inga yes go for it before you before you give the floor to Jonathan so what John just said John has the idea is we at the Foundation tried to carry them out we have a fundraiser going right now I'm just going to blatantly ask for money or material we are raising funds for data loggers temperature data loggers so that most of the camps can start measuring the temperatures between where they are and control areas so that you can start showing those differences if anyone here knows anyone that has a 100 of them lying around let us know because we'll be happy to take them if they don't know they no longer need them or if you know someone that can afford 100 of those because they're about 70 dollars each that would be great too because then we can buy them for the camps and they will start logging that temperature data etc etc etc and if you go to our website there's a link because we're also raising funds for penetrometers scales microwaves and ovens to do all the soil testing and things that need to be done but what John says it's a great indicator measuring the temperature difference it also tells people something is going on but then we need to buy data loggers and they're these are not regular temperature gauges these are expensive things and you need multiple of them per camp I think I would add something to that Luis vet and other scientists should look at the concept of having 50 different living laboratories all connected with data loggers sending the data up to computers so that that and and those having the satellite images having the ability to have localized photography and all the data sets flowing into a central place it very rapidly creates a very serious network of data and which is very robust much better than just say LiDAR from the satellites or something like that and I would also say and to that earlier question and question of funding if the numbers of people joining the ecosystem restoration camps movement as supporting members were to reach let's say one million and they were each just sharing 10 euros per month that would be 120 euros per member per year with a million that would be 120 million euros available to support you know just imagine reaching a million members and I think that what's happening is that this this methodology of mass engagement of the population is so much more effective so much more real than having people go to conferences I mean they spend a hundred million to have conferences and talk about restoration but what we see in in this type of a organization is ordinary people with very small amounts of resources can actually do the work that needs to be done so having the connection between the theoretical overview and the scientific analysis and all of these living laboratories this is the key to to making this a global movement and making it very very effective so I think we have everything we need within this group to make it happen but we just need to learn how do we work together yeah louise as john mentioned your name yeah I have oh god I have to leave but we'll think about it thank you all right thank you john for sharing his words for your words and peter um jones from camp hotlum has a question from sylvia so I well i'm not sure who this question is for um we're currently working on a grant proposal for a funding innovation grant it's a grant to partner with the national forest on innovative funding projects for restoration and the missing component is not the science and the scientific methodology it really is the methodology for measuring the economic opportunities and how to encourage private investment and get out of this kind of non-profit NGO mentality and also out of the mentality of kind of you know government agency appropriations funding and seeking investment capital um for long-term investment in forest health and restoration and so I would be really intrigued to hear from anybody who has connections with economic researchers in academic institutions who are interested in exploring you know how to do a research project and potentially after we get done with this research project which is where the forest service personnel that I've been in communication with have suggested we start instead of the pilot project start with the research um doing research on this economic model so that it could then be scaled you know across the globe with organizations like ecosystem restoration camps so i'm looking for economic researchers from institutions if you know of any thank you thank you johnson for sharing is there anyone who knows someone or a university that is researching this are johnson maybe it's a good idea if you drop your email address in the chat so people are able to reach out to you if um if someone knows anything i think that's the best solution um just just the last few questions for um silvia um mugget do you still have a question for silvia you are you are muted okay okay no i don't i don't have question for her but i just suggesting for the i agree for the data sharing which is very important and to be connected with the academia here in habiba for example we are solving a lot of our problems connecting with like now we have the center of excellence of water so i have a lot of expertise and the universities that are working on on the water issue and then with other with the ancient university so i found the solution with the with the students with some small tools that we can make and then as i mentioned to everyone that we have now the artificial intelligence this is will help a lot in in measuring and accessibility and then we have we found the solutions so thank you thank you that's wonderful news thank you mugget um steven bow yeah yeah the question i had was just about water um for people in the camps where's the water source coming from and is there a sort of nature-based plant filtration system happening on the land um we indeed the biggest challenge was since the beginning that there's no water there um there were thoughts about digging a well uh but then you're not sure you're gonna find water how deep and where and what quality uh so in the end we the idea was also to use the water of the ponds at least for irrigation um it turned out to be too salty at least the moment in which it was started by a student who was here doing an internship with the program of the regeneration academy which is another project here at the farm so now we're actually using that water for irrigation we're gonna measure the salinity and as long as it's doable it's not we're gonna keep using it so what we did now is indeed building this water deposit um which is uh 35 000 liters deposit uh out of concrete uh on the land and we're hauling the water from the farm of La Junquera which is four kilometers away and here there's a natural spring so it's uh the water that reaches all the house i'm i'm leaving here and it's the water we drink the water we use for all needs um so at the moment this is the water source that we have there um and indeed the plan is i'm looking now into putting gutters on all the buildings and having the rainwater as well and then we'll have to think about filters i would like one thing that i've been looking at this past few days also it's indeed using filters to be able to use this water for drinking purposes uh so that volunteers there can finally have all the basic needs covered so also on this side if anybody has um advice ideas on what kind of water filters why what and for what type of water that's uh that would be really nice yeah there's a really um interesting series on apple plus where they're describing different homes and in different places and how they're dealing with that um in sweden there's a man who built a greenhouse that enclosed his log house and he created a kind of Mediterranean climate in Sweden and then he created a kind of plant ecosystem that that basically filters the water for him within his home and um it went through a process in that municipality where they weren't going to let him use that that kind of system but he proved that the water filtration worked way better than the the municipal system and yeah yeah and um the reason i bring that up is is just recently i was listening to a podcast about a woman who just passed away in in the Vancouver area but she was heavily involved in landscape architecture and a big part of what she was doing was using plant-based water filtration systems to purify the water so that they didn't even have to be connected to the the local sewage treatment systems and um she got her technology from NASA because they were trying to figure out well what kind of ecosystem what kind of plants do we need if we were going to go into space and then like grow some plants and have some sort of water purification system in in their spaceships right so they were we're trying to figure out well so these are the kind of plants and and the combinations of organisms that you would need and and the reason i got into that was just because there was a a guy who won the the living building challenge uh John Todd who has this whole thing called living machines where he's he's created the the kind of technology you would need to to basically purify the water so that yeah you have the right combination of plants you'll you'll have clean water in the end yeah indeed we're also thinking for example to be able to have better quality water in the ponds at least for irrigation to build islands of so floating islands of cork with which is something which is already existing people are doing it they're selling it we would like to do our own floating islands of cork with plants on it that can be plants that indeed absorb the salts or any other problem that we need to solve in the water um we're just trying to find cork it's really hard if it's not the the the plants that you buy in in the DIY shops but just like untreated cork impossible to find so but yeah i think that that's indeed a because for example now with the gray waters of the kitchen uh we're just using uh by the radical products and and nothing else so it's going directly into a soil there is a filter with mulch basically that it goes through but nothing more than that and it's already uh let's say a very minimalistic but it works um so indeed i think it would be great to work a bit more with these options yeah yeah i left a bunch of links in the chat if you want um any resources on what i just mentioned hi thank you i believe that uh maggot in um in habiba camp in in the cyanide will be getting some support for creating some sort of uh water through phyto remediation or other natural things so that could be something that could be shared later on the designs and the and the and the functionality of this and that is john todd working together with the weather makers so i think that's going to be a very good thing great yeah thank you thank you for sharing us steven and john um we are already one hour and 45 minutes into this call i feel yeah i'm a thank you all so much for all your questions but i do feel it's it's a good um time to end the q and a session uh if you are all all right with with that um so i want to thank you all very much for joining this q and a session and what an energy in this school thank you so much um yeah john would you like to stay for another open discussion or i can stay as long as anyone wants to stay i guess if people would like to stay for for another open discussion with john then feel free to stay otherwise also feel free to to end this beautiful q and a session thank you uh thank you so much for joining everyone