Slowing Runoff to Prevent Erosion and Save Soil

Our Gurrabeal Australian Carbon Credit Unit (ACCU) project is about much more than just capturing carbon. We are trying to correct the damage done by a century of farming and reconnect the remnant vegetation on the property with the surrounding koala habitat.

One major issue created by clearing the land was erosion. Rainfall at Gurrabeal is relatively low, only about 550mm a year, but when it comes, it comes hard, and can take a lot of the topsoil with it, as well as erode gullies and prevent plants from establishing themselves. As it will take some time for our seedlings to become established enough to prevent erosion, we needed a solution to slow runoff in the meantime.

Leaky Weirs

We used an excavator to move boulders around the site to create so-called leaky weirs at various points in the eroded gullies. A leaky weir is not a dam that captures water, but instead is a permeable barrier that slows water and catches sediment, so it is not washed further downstream. Our leaky weirs built of local stone will eventually catch sediment and leaf litter that will further slow the water so it can be absorbed into the ground on Gurrabeal, rather than taking the nutrients and soil with it down to Murrumbucca Creek. We expect this to improve the amount and quality of water on the property, and to improve the water quality in the creek.