At Terracrua Design, Regenerative Landscape Planning integrates principles of Permaculture Design, Holistic Grazing Management, various “schools” of Regenerative Agriculture and Forestry, as well as Keyline Design, through its key tool, the “Keyline Scale of Relative Permanence”.
Despite its complicated name, this intuitive and sensible concept serves as an essential tool for consciously, efficiently and intelligently designing projects that aim to create balance and efficient integration of human needs with the complex dynamics of the ecological, landscape, and territorial systems in which they are inserted.
Originally conceived as a tool for water management, the “Keyline Scale of Relative Permanence” (KSOP) was developed in the 1950s by P.A. Yeomans in Australia. However, it is accepted that this method encompasses much more than just water management, and ultimately, the KSOP aims to create “perennially fertile landscapes” integrated in partnership with the surrounding environment, robust and resilient in the face of weather fluctuations.
In practice, the KSOP sequences the main determining factors of the landscape in order of importance based on their “relative permanence”, meaning:
- Relative permanence over time, which is expressed in durability;
- “Energetic” permanence, or the relative difficulty required to modify a given factor, which is expressed in energy.
- Specifically, the more difficult a factor is to modify and the more permanent it is over time, the greater its “importance” or priority will be on the “Permanence Scale”. In reality, this importance translates into a higher degree of influence and impact on landscapes and human activities.
The KSOP has been widely used in planning farms in eroded and semi-desertified territories and has undergone slight adaptations to better suit different contexts, without losing its basic structure of observation, planning, and implementation. With the KSOP, Yeomans guides us towards a holistic observation, but hierarchized in a set of circumstances that determinately influence the territory.
By prioritizing this set of factors, both for the designer and the project promoter, we can identify limits that help us define the focus of action and avoid wasting time on things that are impossible or very difficult to change. The Permanence Scale allows us to focus on solutions and on spaces or domains where the ease of change is greater or faster, also helping us in scheduling objectives.
Essentially, the KSOP is a structuring tool that, depending on the context and needs of its users, can be revised or adapted in order to better encompass the needs of designers of resilient landscapes.
At Terracrua Design, we adopt the following sequence, with the awareness that, depending on the intensity of use, we may add or replace one or more factors that prove relevant in the context of our country or our own design methodologies:
Climate
Refers to the different interpretations of climates: atmospheric, cultural, and even mental (which translates into individual and/or community objectives).
Topography/Geography
Covers the geomorphological and topographical characteristics of a territory.
Water/Water Resources
A critical and vital resource, rainwater, springs, streams, or even groundwater (in the water table) may be scarce or abundant, an opportunity or a limitation (for example, in seasonal flooding areas or in the case of aquifers very close to the surface).
Social and Economic Factors and Legal Constraints
Refers to the available capital, neighborhood, available markets (local or not), social connections, and legal constraints that can be critical for decisions or success.
Access/Roads
Their layout or arrangement defines mobility in the territory, as well as the amount of energy needed for each displacement or transportation of goods between different areas of a territory.
Vegetation and Wildlife
Woody vegetation, wild animals are elements that by themselves (without human intervention), change slowly and produce biocenoses and productive ecosystems vital in the landscape, which are critical in supporting other ecosystems.
Microclimates
The combination of the above factors creates microclimates, which are strongly dependent on stronger external factors, but influence the arrangement of the following elements on the Scale of Permanence.
Built and Infrastructure
Covers buildings, fences, pavements, electrical supply networks, communications, water, sewage, and irrigation, corrals, greenhouses, and other utilities whose correct positioning promotes less maintenance and greater project resilience.
Limits and Boundaries/Zones
There are several ways to moderately extend the area of a property, for example, dams that collect water from downstream lines located outside the property, land transfers for grazing. However, planning fences within the property gains by establishing an open framework for future opportunities.
Soils
Although they are the basis of human productivity and prosperity, they are easily destroyed, but fortunately regenerated, both structurally and at the pH level, so we should not be tied to the type of soil we found.
Energy
In absolute terms, it is easy to switch from one type of energy source to another, from oil to solar or wind.
Aesthetics
A subjective category, the aesthetics of a place depends “on the eyes of the beholder,” but even more so on the above factors, it is, however, an interesting and relevant human experience in terms of well-being.
The “Keyline Scale of Relative Permanence” is an exercise that refers us to the establishment of objectives and priorities. It defines an auxiliary methodological line in decision-making, in projects aimed at the design of socially just environments that produce stable, ecological, and ethically satisfactory results.
Finally, in an initial phase of the design process, each factor is defined separately but should be understood in fine as interrelated parts of a complex whole, the fertile landscapes we propose to create.
It is most likely the key to organizing our farms and estates since, among other things, it restores ecological functions and natural primary cycles to benefit the quality of life of people, local ecosystems, and economic production.
Terracrua Design Team
