A zuni bowl is a riparian restoration technique involving rocks, water, biology and time. It’s a great way of dealing with a small headcut (or erosion which is about to become a headcut) in order to prevent that headcut continuing up your catchment.
Headcuts are not an uncommon sight in our valley’s many gullies. Many decades of clearing the land and grazing pressure have made the soils very fragile. For a long time, we’ve been scouting around for the best way to deal with them using simple, accessible materials and knowledge. And now we’re starting to find answers.
“Zuni Bowl: A headcut control structure composed of rock lined step falls and plunge pools that prevents headcuts from continuing to migrate upstream. Zuni Bowls stabilize actively eroding headcuts by dissipating the energy of falling water at the headcut pour-over and the bed of the channel. The structure converts the single cascade of an eroding headcut into a series of smaller step falls.
Zuni Bowls also serve to maintain soil moisture on the face of the headcut, encouraging the establishment of protective vegetation. Original concept developed by Bill Zeedyk and the people of Zuni Pueblo.“
The idea of the zuni bowl came to us via Tamara Gadzia, who was traveling with her husband Kirk Gadzia, the Holistic Management teacher we brought to Australia with RegenAG. Last year when we met Kirk and Tamara, we were introduced to the work of Bill Zeedyk and the Quivira Coalition, and I was blown away.
I’ll go into the Quivira Coalition and Bill Zeedyk’s very fine publication Let the Water do the Work another time, but suffice to say we were very excited about the techniques: simple, effective, adaptive riperian restoration ideas…
So this year when Kirk and Tamara returned, we got into it. We asked Tamara to come and lead a special intern project at our farm for a day, assessing and working with the gully next to our classroom.
We proceeded to tackle two small headcuts in the gully with variations on the zuni bowl technique – slowing the water down, taking the velocity out of it and spreading it out, encouraging biology, stabilizing the remaining soil.
This turned out to be a fabulous team-building exercise – you’d be surprised who turns out to be the best rock-placer! Lots of cross-talk, debating, trying out and cheering, as we created two sets of very particular yet fluid rock structures to help repair this landscape.
One of the many fantastic resources that the Quivira Coalition make available is this great starter guide. We laminated the pages on Zuni Bowls and took them with us out into the field, which made them much easier to work with.
Many thanks to Tamara + Kirk Gadzia for their time, passion and knowledge in landscape restoration, and in Holistic Management. It was great to have you both at Milkwood Farm…
Riparian Restoration Resources:
Possibly related posts:
- The saga of the middle dam
- Crash grazing the creekflat – an experiment
- Alan Savory in the Australian Outback
Great work! Who is volunteering to take the photos/video during the bext big rain event?
Of all of the runoff mitigation structures I built, a series of 3 plunge pools with compacted clay bases are the ones that worked the best and remain unchanged. Next time I modify slightly and will call them Zuni Bowls. Cool name.
have a look at the instruction in the above doc, Evan, there’s some subtle but quite specific aspects to making a successful zuni bowl – all very do-able, tho! good luck…
Great post. Thanks for sharing. We have two ‘headcuts’ in creeks on our place. The first is / was about the same height as the first one in your pictures. It self healed over the space of about 3 years … helped by the grass species that happened to be there and planned grazing … with plenty of time for the grass to recover / grow post grazing. The other is about a metre in height. We put rocks in it to slow the flow but there was no design to what we did and the water found its way… Read more »
hi, what is a headcut? as you may or may not know, native american water management structures — their history, archaeology, astrophysics etc. are a burgeoning academic field here in the u.s.. fascinating to see them used in post modern life.
from Wikipedia: Head Cut (Stream Geomorphology) is an erosional feature of some intermittent streams and perennial streams where an abrupt vertical drop in the stream bed occurs. Head cuts resemble a small waterfall or, when not flowing, the head cut will resemble a very short cliff or bluff. A small plunge pool may be present at the base of the head cut due to the high energy of falling water. Groundwater seeps and springs are sometimes found along the face, sides, or base of a head cut.
Finally, a solution to an issue that’s affected us for a few years. Will have some help out here later this month and this would be a good project.
Just a few more weeks to go to finish up my first permaculture class here in Texas. Here’s to more compassionate co-existing with our land!
Fanastasic concept! Just wondered if this would work for a 5m head cut? And do you use any grass seed? Thanks in advance.
Rose I would refer to the quivira guides on what would work best for a 5m headcut? we did sprinkle seed, and part of it is packing in the clods around the top lip. all seed spreading of appropriate species would be encouraged…
Is there a way to make the zuni bowls hold water, like lining with clay? Does this happen automatically/
Hi Frances, well they hold water pretty well, actually… but its more about slowing erosion than storage…
Wow – I have a few of these on my property at Blakney Creek and was contemplating how to approach them now the NSW Soil Conservation guys have completed the dams I can do this with the rest
highly recommend checking out the resources in this post Nerida: https://www.milkwood.net/2011/11/04/making-a-zuni-bowl-let-the-water-do-the-work/ and also Bill ZeDyk’s book on the subject – powerful smple stuff, the CMA’s are getting into it to which is great!
Brilliantly simple hydraulic solution! I love it.
VERY useful post thank you Kirsten and milkwood gang!
We just got forwarded an email about this articel from Dr John Field from the Fenner School of Environment and Society at the Australian National University.
He made some good points about the importance of restricting livestock access to the erosion zone and the addition of copious quantities gypsum if your soils are dispersive.
Both things that we did, but failed to mention in the article. 🙂
Thanks Dr John
Wonder if that would work using wood ie. logs cut to size
There’s other structures Paul that do use logs… Search on quivira coalition for their how-to guides…
Question when that could perform making use of wooden ie. fire wood reduce to dimension.steel building manufacturers
This is cool – yet another earthwork form that I’ve now learned to prevent erosion and increase absorption. Thanks for sharing!
Great job. For a Zuni Bowl video and other process-based erosion repair how-to’s, check out https://www.youtube.com/@riverridgeranch980
Great work Gary – all the best with the restoration there, it’s looking amazing.