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better for their residents by planting, and encouraging planting, trees. Not just in cities and towns, but along roadways, in median strips, and in any open space not being used for crops. Even pastures could benefit from trees growing in them, offering shade to livestock on hot days and slowing the winds enough to get snow to pile up and melt into the aquifer. Not just any trees either, but broad leaf trees that are drought, insect, and disease resistant.

Putting dams across washes and gullies, the results of land erosion, would keep water on the land, allowing it to soak down into the aquifers as well. Our water table in Colorado and Kansas is over one hundred feet below what it was at eighty years ago, mostly due to irrigation, population growth, and drought. The rains and snows cannot replenish the water table because there aren't enough storms to soak the ground and fill them. There is also the problem of so many depending on the water to irrigate crops, gardens, and lawns because of so little rain and so many people.

Replenishing the land through fertilizers like manure, legume crops and grasses, and rotted vegetation, better known as compost, can help immensely, anywhere. Planting trees to attract the storms bringing rain and snow can keep the rivers flowing and help provide fresh water for people around the world.

Too simple, and too simplistic, you say? Well, sometimes the simple solutions are the best ones. Collecting tree seeds and planting them is simple. Planting fast growing trees, with slower growing trees nearby, can alleviate drought problems more quickly because the fast growing trees are so fast growing. The good old practice of having rain gutters and rain barrels for water storage could help provide water to get the trees growing better, without using up the limited existing resources. Mulching windbreaks and gardens helps keep the moisture in the soil, saving water too.

All of these ideas can help save our great rivers and forests, while helping drought stricken areas all over. Laugh if you want, but I am planting trees to do my part even if no one else will listen, do the research, and just think about things. If you can come up with better solutions, I'm willing to listen. If you can't, why not try my ideas, they might surprise you!

Learn more about this author, Heather Foster.
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