Tag: human settlement

A line of trees, shrubs, or constructed fencing planted or erected to reduce wind speed and protect soil, crops, livestock, or buildings on the leeward side. Windbreaks are landscape features that shape the microclimate for hundreds of feet downwind — they reduce evaporation, prevent soil erosion, trap snow for moisture, and create shelter for wildlife. The Great Plains shelterbelt program of the 1930s planted 220 million trees in windbreaks stretching from Texas to North Dakota.

 A low dam built across a river to raise the water level, regulate flow, or divert water into a channel. Unlike a dam, a weir is designed to be overtopped — water flows over it continuously. Weirs create a smooth, glassy lip of water that spills into turbulence below. They are ancient structures — some of the oldest human modifications of rivers.

The elevated temperatures in a city compared to the surrounding countryside, caused by impervious surfaces absorbing and re-radiating solar energy, waste heat from buildings and vehicles, and the absence of vegetation. A city can be 5–10°F warmer than the farmland around it. The city makes its own climate, and it's hotter.

The seasonal movement of grazing animals — and the people who tend them — between lowland winter pastures and highland summer pastures. Not nomadism; transhumance is a fixed annual circuit between two known places, the rhythm of the year written into the movement of flocks.

 A circle of stones on the ground marking where a tipi once stood — the rocks that held down the edges of the hide cover, left in place after the structure was taken down and the people moved on. Tipi rings are found across the Great Plains by the thousands, sometimes clustered in groups that indicate seasonal camps used repeatedly over generations. They are among the most understated and moving marks on the American landscape — just a ring of stones in the grass, and a whole way of life implied.

A level or nearly level surface cut into a slope, creating a step in the hillside. Terraces have been used for agriculture on every inhabited continent — from the rice terraces of Bali and the Philippines to the Inca andenes of Peru to the dry-farmed slopes of the Mediterranean. They turn gravity from an enemy into a tool, holding soil and water in place on ground that would otherwise shed both.

A sharp, reversing turn in a trail or road ascending a steep slope, zigzagging back and forth to reduce the gradient. Switchbacks trade distance for steepness — you walk farther but climb more gently. They are the engineering solution to the problem of gravity on foot, and they shape how we experience mountains: slowly, in lateral traverses, with the view changing at every turn.

Slash-and-burn cultivation — fell the forest, burn it, plant in the ash, move on when the soil is spent. The ash is the fertilizer; the clearing is the field. Swidden is the oldest and most widespread form of agriculture on earth, and in tropical forests it can be sustainable at low population density.

 A shallow, elongated depression in the landscape — either natural or human-made — that collects and infiltrates water. In permaculture and land management, a swale is a ditch dug along a contour line with a berm on its downhill side, designed to capture rainwater and let it soak into the soil rather than running off. The word applies equally to natural low spots in coastal dunes and to carefully engineered earthworks.

 A structure built into or over a fence or wall that allows people to pass through while keeping livestock enclosed. Stiles come in many forms — stone steps, wooden ladder steps, squeeze gates, kissing gates — and are among the most quietly civilized features of the rural English and Welsh landscape. They are invitations: the land beyond is open to you on foot, but the animals stay put.