Using the Miyawaki Method: Forest in the Desert
Growing a forest in barren, arid land requires an inventive approach. This approach, known as the Miyawaki Method, transforms barren land into an oasis of biodiversity!
Below is an excerpt Mini-forest revolution By Hannah Lewis. It has been adapted for apply on the Internet.
Photo courtesy of Gaurav Gurjar
The history of the Miyawaki method
When Gaurav Gurjar of Afforestt tried to identify local species that could be planted in a patch of degraded, semi-arid land in central Rajasthan, India, he studied elderly local paintings and poetry.
Diving into this particular renovation project, Gurjar actually lives on site under 30 AC voltage. (12 ha) plot of desert sandwiched between 308 miles. (496 km) Luni River and one of its tributaries Meethadi.
He moved there in 2018 with his life and professional partner Varsha Gurjar, training and communication coordinator at Afforestt. The land was offered to Afforestt by a person who runs a school and an animal shelter in the neighboring area.
Testing the method
His intention was to allow the group to test the Miyawaki method in extreme conditions and establish a native desert tree nursery.
After its inception, the project, named Maruvan (meaning “desert forest”), spun off from Afforestt and became an independent, non-profit organization.
When the Gurjars arrived, the sandy earth was almost completely bare, literally providing a blank slate for restoration experiments in an barren environment.
Experimenting with arid environments
“Whenever we do a project for a client, we don’t have much room to experiment,” Gurjar explained to me during a video call. Gurjar, a juvenile man with round glasses, seems to be in his element in Maruvan, where he can study ecosystem processes on a daily basis.
“We only implement ways that we are confident in, our standard ways of reforestation, and we cannot fail these projects. Therefore, Maruvan was created on the assumption that we could fail. For this purpose, we chose one of the most challenging lands. We wanted to grow forests in arid lands.”
The average annual rainfall in the area is 300 mm (12 in), but it does not necessarily rain every yearand every twenty to thirty years, flash floods wash the landscape down to the ground in places, stripping the land of juvenile and scant vegetation.
Temperatures in summer reach highs of 50°C (122°F), while lows in winter are just above freezing.
When I asked Gurjar about trees, he replied by talking about water. Noting that the local hydrological cycle was interrupted due to soil degradation, Gurjar said his first task was to create a water-harvesting structure.
Miyawaki method: collecting water
Gaurav Gurjar planted the Maruvan mini forest in 2019 in the desert of Rajasthan, India. Courtesy of Gaurav Gurjar.
“You have to start somewhere,” Gurjar explained.
“If you start in the forest, you have to bring in water from outside and then plant it. Once a forest develops, it structures the soil in such a way that regardless of rainfall, the soil is able to retain moisture in the root zone. But if you don’t have water, where do you start? We started with water.”
Gurjar studied the customary designs of wells and ponds that desert communities across Rajasthan have used for thousands of years to collect and store water to survive long periods without rain.
Water source design
Designs vary depending on local geology and creativity.
After several experiments, Maruvan’s team decided to drill a hole 6.7 m (22 ft) deep to avoid groundwater intrusion, which is salty and unfit for consumption by plants or humans.
Instead, the sajja ka kuva well, as it is known in the local language, collects groundwater seeping through horizontal veins in the ground; this water seeps through the spaces between the bricks that make up the sides of the well and is not sealed with mortar.
In turn, groundwater is fed by a 0.4 ha (1 acre) pond dug by the team, along with a canal connecting it to the seasonal river.
The pond and well filled in the following monsoon, providing about eight months of water to plant the first patches of Miyawaki-style forest.
Network expansion
Later, Maruvan developed a network of ponds, canals and open wells, expecting to provide enough water to survive two or three years without rain. Water from ponds seeps beyond the banks into the ground, eventually reaching wells.
“We will study horizontal water movement, which is the distance that moisture moves horizontally in the soil,” Gurjar explained.
“In these horizontal zones we will plant a forest. Our goal is that we shouldn’t need irrigation because no one irritates the soil in the desert – that’s not how trees grow naturally. But to achieve this natural system, we first need to have natural water systems that can support these forests.”
The title of Jungle Tree Expert given to Gurjar by Afforestt is not for nothing, given his excellent knowledge of plants, although he can also be called a Drylands Ecosystem Expert.
The power of observation
A year before moving there, he started observing what was happening on land and what species were there. “I sat here for six or seven hours in extreme heat. I sat under a tree and just watched what the ants were doing, what the dung beetles were doing, what the hoverflies and dragonflies were doing.”
These types of close-up observations led Gurjar to critical discoveries, such as how to get an critical local tree to sprout.
When Gurjar first tried to sprout jaal tree (Salvadora persica) seeds harvested directly from the plant, it didn’t work.
“By accident,” he explained, “I found a place where many bulbulas and house sparrows were sitting, and many seeds were sprouting under them. When I observed their droppings, I noticed that there were seeds in them. Then we started collecting those seeds, and when we germinated them, within a day or two they sprouted.”
The Miyawaki method: relationships between birds and plants
Gurjar was able to recognize another bird-plant relationship through poetry written decades earlier by a local Marwari poet (Marwari refers to the inhabitants of the Jodhpur region in southwestern Rajasthan).
Among the 700 verses describing local plants, animals and their interactions is a verse about daabh grass (Desmostachya bipinnata) nests built by weaver birds.
However, no species were found in Maruvan until Gurjar decided to remove the invasive plants Prosopis juliflora, a species of mesquite native to the Americas.
“When we removed the non-native species, the grass automatically came back.” Gurjar said. “And as soon as the grass appeared, the weaver birds flocked to our land. Right now, on the balcony where I’m sitting, I have fifteen to twenty nests that weavers are making in front of me. And then all the villagers came and said, “OK, this bird has come back after being lost for forty years on this particular land.”
The beginnings of the Mini Forest
Minilas Maruvan is circulating two years later in 2021. Courtesy of Gaurav Gurjar.
The first Miyawaki Maruvana mini-forest contained forty-four species established on the basis of environmental studies of the Luni River basin throughout the region, the botanical poetry mentioned above, and local art.
A print on display in a temple a few miles from Maruvan depicts an event that occurred in 1730: in which the king’s men killed 363 people in defense of huge khejri trees (Prosopis cineraria) that the king wanted to cut down to build a palace.
“The paintings in the temple depict these huge trees with women hugging the trees,” Gurjar explained.
The art of the Miyawaki method
Similarly, he added, the paintings in the nearby fort depict the king hunting in the area.
The dense vegetation, huge trees, birds and leopards depicted in these scenes are painted in such detail that individual species can be identified.
These elderly works of art suggest what the area’s vegetation may have looked like before the land degraded.
Gurjar explained that over time, the harvest of huge, slow-growing trees became so huge that it eventually reached a tipping point.
Hundreds of seedlings that would have grown under the cover of a single tree crown were unable to withstand such extreme conditions, and the renewal cycle was interrupted.
A turning point
If cutting down trees started the desertification process, overgrazing, sand mining and the introduction of alien species ended it.
Even in a well state, the vegetation of the semi-arid environment is different from the vegetation of damp forests in other parts of India.
Gurjar observed that desert vegetation grows in dense, scattered clumps of grasses, shrubs, and vines around one or two trees. Shrubs retain enough moisture for trees to grow.
Modeling this structure, the Gurjars and volunteers from the local village planted the forests in circular clusters of four to five seedlings per square meter, spacing each circle by a foot or two.
With each subsequent planting and continued observation, Gurjar narrowed the list of species to the plants most adapted to hyperlocal conditions.
“These ecosystems are so intricate that just 100 m. [328 ft.] from where I’m sitting, the vegetation or the guild may be different,” he said.
As a result, the second and third groves, planted with thirty-five and twenty-five species respectively, required less water than the first, which probably contains species adapted to slightly different conditions elsewhere in the region.
By connecting the land to the river and favoring the fittest species, Gurjar appears to be well on its way to repairing the broken local water cycle.