Justdiggit research: How local changes can have a global impact


Justdiggit (formerly: Naga foundation), a Netherlands-based foundation, is implementing re-greening interventions over large areas with both local impact, regional spin-offs and atmospheric effects. Justdiggit’s method is to restore degraded lands on a large scale using rainwater harvesting and other techniques to increase soil moisture and water availability.

This leads to an increase of vegetation in these degraded lands. In itself greening has a positive effect since vegetation retains fertile soils, slows down runoff, improves infiltration and cools surface temperatures. If done on a large enough scale these landscape changes also affect local climatic conditions (evapotranspiration, temperature, cloud formation), which in turn have a positive effect on regional climate.

To achieve these large scale effects Justdiggit works on so called ‘Hydrologic corridors’: large regions in which strategic project locations are selected and rehabilitated. These project locations are strategically chosen to maximize their impact on the whole region of the hydrologic corridor. The scientific theories behind the concept of the hydrologic corridor and its impact on the regional climate have been researched and are described in a white paper.


Project details


Project location:Kilimanjaro ecosystem, Kenya
(find climate data for this location)
Project manager:Lucas Borst
External website:https://justdiggit.org
Period:2015

Project partners


Justdiggit Wageningen UR
Wageningen UR


Data for this project


Water for the recovery of the planet - How local changes can have a global impact


Literature research on the scientific theories of how large scale water harvesting project can influence the regional climate.
Size: 4.13 MB
Date: 2015-05-08
Author: Lucas Borst, Merel Hoogmoed, Sander de Haas, Fons Jaspers, Bert Amesz, Carlo Wesseling
Contact: sdh@nagafoundation.org
Reference: https://nagafoundation.org/approach