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What is Strategic Watering?
Strategic Watering is an applied synthesis of the science on Forest Moisture Circulation, "FMC" (detailed to the right), to rehydrate droughted forests in ways that they attract, circulate and/or catalyze rainfall and other forms of net positive precipitation over large landscapes. Strategic Watering can easily be used to interrupt and reverse wildfire conditions with a few thousand gallons deployed correctly. The strategy maximizes forest moisture-sharing over contiguous forest systems by rehydrating superlative trees in strategically-located groves, thus extra-exponentially increasing the value and efficiency of the waterer's initial water inputs. Why Trees and Forests? Trees and forests are evaporative-cooling towers, more or less. They're also the biggest, living stores of moisture on a landscape. Behaviorally, they survive and thrive by circulating moisture through the air, close to their canopies, across great distances, sharing with each other from place to place across the continents. In so doing they create the weather we love: calm, cool and productive. Yes, bigger is better. The bigger the forest infrastructure and its trees, the bigger the benefits of watering trees to prevent drought. How to Locate: hub, conduit or edge. You can apply this at any scale. Strategic Watering looks at a whole forest system's footprint, infrastructure-quality, and known atmospheric moisture flows, at varying scales, then locates two Rainmaking with Trees projects inside an identifiable hub or conduit zone, such as the Eugene, Oregon area in the Pacific Northwest. There are many, many locations around the world for strategic watering. Tree quality is most important. Below: From The NorthWest Projects: 2024 Report, a simple model identifying macro FMC paths, conduits and hubs one can connect to at continental scale in the Pacific Northwest USA. The blue dots simply trace forested areas as shown on Google Maps. 
Why Strategic Watering
Strategic rehydration of forests is the most effective, efficient and beneficial way to move moisture over large landscapes. How do we know this?Trees and Forests are how rivers and land life were most often established over the eons of life on Earth. According to the science, it is the inward-creeping forests that bring moisture circulation inland. Forests and trees are 100s of millions of years older than humans, and super-human in their moisture-sharing abilities. In times of erosion and drought trees and forests simply need gentle, careful, slow rehydration of their natural, biological wellbeing to refill themselves and initiate drought condition resolution at larger scale. That's what trees do. They are built to share. Trees = Rain, once hydrated. Water them. Relax. Let them do what they do and eliminate drought conditions. 
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Above: The Five Layers of Forest Moisture Circulation: Micro to Global.
Moving Moisture Over Large Landscapes Forests channel atmospheric moisture into "livable climate", biospheric abundance, and thus life-security on land. Choosing the right location for Strategic Watering depends on your project goals, the shape of your given forest, that forest system's proximity to active airborne moisture flows, dominant winds, and water availability. Strategic Watering scales and usually brings transformative results within about 10,000 gallons' (half of a swimming pool) worth of trickle-in water 25 18"-diamter, large-canopy trees (200 gallons each). Old growth trees are far more effective. Effects vary between level of isolation, level of dehydration, level of atmospheric drought, level of soil drought, and the varying ways conifer and deciduous forests bring precipitation, but this scale of application can be relied on for wildfire mitigation over large areas due to dehydrated living and dead forest material. While Rainmaking with Trees focuses on addressing each tree’s individual hydration needs in a grove, Strategic Watering focuses on locating and aligning the Rainmaking with Trees protocol according to regional, continental and global FMC flows. By working with "the biggest players on the field" (large trees) in the most advantageous locations, we maximize moisture airborne supply and sharing. Below: Strategic Watering sites from The NorthWest Projects: 2024.
How to do Strategic Watering In basic terms, utilize these criteria to find your Strategic Watering sites: 1. Determine forest connectedness. 2. Determine relevant moisture flows. 3. Determine goals and viable locations. You need Water at least two strategically located poles, at least 1 mile apart, in a given area. Then conduct the Rainmaking with Trees process and expect to get good quality FMC and precipitation over a large area, probably rain. Once you are on site, set up and are ready to water:
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How much water
200 gallons per 18" diameter tree. No more than 10,000 gallons total (half of a backyard swimming pool) for your first experiment. You should receive back at least 2X the value of the water you put, potentially much more.
What kinds of trees
Water large-canopy, large-trunk trees. Old-growth are most effective, "superlative" is the best overall characteristic regardless of age. The bigger the canopy and trunk, the more powerful. Green leaves are a must, whether conifer or deciduous. Trees without leaves will not have the same effects.
How many trees
Twenty-five 18" diameter trees at ankle height (or larger) are the most reliable "engine". For a project you might have 12 trees at Site A and 13 trees at site B. If you can't find large to super-large trees for your project, find an equivalent total amount of trunk inches. For example, eighteen 10"-diameter trees instead of ten 18"-diameter trees, this can still work. Leaf-Area Index (total quantity of green leaves in a given space) is the most important factor in rainmaking; you want as many ready-to-photosynthesize leaves as possible.
How fast to water
We use 5-gallon trickle buckets 100% of the time, there are numerous good reasons, ie.: easy to place, portable, non-invasive, low cost, zero energy, and reusable for years.
How fast til change
Conditions are everything. The confluence of vegetation, soil-life, and atmospheric moisture statuses defines precipitation received. A droughted-system with zero atmospheric moisture cannot magically make it rain. These things have to build up. Depending on the condition of the individual trees and resources in your system, and moisture resources in the air, it can take anywhere from hours to days to see precipitation and rainfall come.
What Not to do
Do not locate your rainmaking or strategic watering projects in the center of an Exceptional Drought. Exceptional droughts are driven by a lack of moisture across all three of the most important FMC domains: air, vegetation, and soil. When the air becomes a desert, as it did Fall of 2024 over most of the United States, for weeks at a time then already-droughted have no resource to partner with. Though the trees you water will try to generate hyper-local precipitation within their forest continuum adding invaluable moist circulation to large landscapes they are unlikely to bring rainfall.
What To Do
Utilize the above guidelines to site yourself, then apply the Rainmaking with Trees process.
Project Templates
Download templates here for various projects, from backyards to whole nations.
Tell Us What Did!
We want to track what's happening and build community. Drop us a line anytime.
200 gallons per 18" diameter tree. No more than 10,000 gallons total (half of a backyard swimming pool) for your first experiment. You should receive back at least 2X the value of the water you put, potentially much more.
What kinds of trees
Water large-canopy, large-trunk trees. Old-growth are most effective, "superlative" is the best overall characteristic regardless of age. The bigger the canopy and trunk, the more powerful. Green leaves are a must, whether conifer or deciduous. Trees without leaves will not have the same effects.
How many trees
Twenty-five 18" diameter trees at ankle height (or larger) are the most reliable "engine". For a project you might have 12 trees at Site A and 13 trees at site B. If you can't find large to super-large trees for your project, find an equivalent total amount of trunk inches. For example, eighteen 10"-diameter trees instead of ten 18"-diameter trees, this can still work. Leaf-Area Index (total quantity of green leaves in a given space) is the most important factor in rainmaking; you want as many ready-to-photosynthesize leaves as possible.
How fast to water
We use 5-gallon trickle buckets 100% of the time, there are numerous good reasons, ie.: easy to place, portable, non-invasive, low cost, zero energy, and reusable for years.
How fast til change
Conditions are everything. The confluence of vegetation, soil-life, and atmospheric moisture statuses defines precipitation received. A droughted-system with zero atmospheric moisture cannot magically make it rain. These things have to build up. Depending on the condition of the individual trees and resources in your system, and moisture resources in the air, it can take anywhere from hours to days to see precipitation and rainfall come.
What Not to do
Do not locate your rainmaking or strategic watering projects in the center of an Exceptional Drought. Exceptional droughts are driven by a lack of moisture across all three of the most important FMC domains: air, vegetation, and soil. When the air becomes a desert, as it did Fall of 2024 over most of the United States, for weeks at a time then already-droughted have no resource to partner with. Though the trees you water will try to generate hyper-local precipitation within their forest continuum adding invaluable moist circulation to large landscapes they are unlikely to bring rainfall.
What To Do
Utilize the above guidelines to site yourself, then apply the Rainmaking with Trees process.
Project Templates
Download templates here for various projects, from backyards to whole nations.
Tell Us What Did!
We want to track what's happening and build community. Drop us a line anytime.
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Below: Chris Searles' Strategic Watering sites from projects in Oregon, California, Arizona, New Mexico and Texas, 2020-2024, according to living forest infrastructure. More info here. |
