In a mountainous landscape where arable land is scarce, their combination of shallow water, high nutrient levels, and high productivity is ideal for the growth of organisms at the base of the food web that then feed a diverse number of fish, amphibians, shellfish, and insect species, while continuous supplying food. Many species of birds and mammals rely on rice terraces for food, water, and shelter, during migration and breeding, making their existence important to the conservation of global biodiversity.
With techniques unchanged for 2000 years, their biological performance has potential to inform the integration of vertical farming and landscaping within the infrastructures of the future. The terracing innovations that are constructed on slopes of up to seventy degrees, have a scale and steepness similar to that of a skyscraper, hinting at the opportunities that our urban, vertical environments could become havens for aquatic, terrestrial, and airborne biodiversity. Countering the idea that indigenous innovation is primitive and exists isolated from technology, are Lo—TEK systems that build on traditional ecological knowledge (TEK) and vernacular architecture to generate sustainable, resilient, nature-based terracing technologies.
Lo—TEK, Design by Radical Indigenism is a Taschen book by Julia Watson that catalogues millennia-old human ingenuity on how to live in symbiosis with nature. Lo—TEK