Water scarcity: In centuries/millennia prior, our land would be occasionally flooded. I’m not sure how often that would occur, or if it even occurred on a regular basis. However, because the flow rate for the Jefferson Slough temporarily ceased in the early 1900s, and because the current flow rate is checked, I don’t think it has flooded in living memory.
Scott found that the Jefferson Slough was a major historical channel of the Jeff, but after a large flood near the early 1900s it became closed off. The slough was subsequently reopened as an irrigation channel, I think he said in the 40s or 50s.
Our land is pocketed depressions and gullies, and potentially old oxbow channels that have stagnant water in them. If using a rotational grazing system as I have experimented with in the past, we have multiple areas that are difficult to use without trucking water to them.
I’m not sure if getting in some installations on the slough, slowing down the water and increasing the water table, might also increase and refresh the water that seeps up in the depressions. If it did, that would seriously improve the ease of integrating a rotational grazing system with ruminants on this land. I’m not gonna hold my breath, but it’s something I’ll be monitoring before/after the installations take place just out of curiosity 🙂