In these drought-stricken times, a new book by Peter Andrews outlining his philosophy of water management will undoubtedly attract a lot of interest.

The book, Back from the brink: How Australia’s landscape can be saved, was published by ABC Books last month.

Peter Andrews came to public attention last year when the ABC’s Australian Story featured his restoration of degraded farmland through changed water management, a system he calls natural sequence farming.

The program attracted enormous interest around the country, and scientists are now monitoring the farmland to understand the system.

Natural sequence farming aims to rehydrate soils by slowing down water flow through the landscape.

Before European settlement, many of our waterways were shallow chains of ponds that flowed intermittently. Since settlement, land clearing and erosion have increased the speed of water flowing through the landscape, and the chains of ponds have become continuous deeper waterways that drain land much more quickly.

Peter Andrews believes we need to restore the landscape’s original hydrology where rain events flooded local catchments, spread water and nutrient-rich sediment over the land and restored local aquifers.

Claims for natural sequence farming are that it increases surface and subsurface water storage, reduces losses to evaporation, and reduces uncontrolled runoff.

An Australian Research Council project is currently monitoring the effectiveness of natural sequence farming in the Upper Hunter, and Peter Andrews and several agencies and organisations have formed the Land Hydration Alliance to seek funding to scientifically test natural sequence farming principles across Australia.

You can read more about the Alliance at www.naturaledgeproject.net/NaturalSequenceFarming.aspx