Interactive and Accessible Watershed Conservation Education through Scale Models

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Pictured above from left to right: F2F Field Officers Franqui Linarez and Maria Montas, F2F Volunteers Patricia Algara and Cesar Cahusac 

Last year, Patricia Algara was invited to the Dominican Republic to consult with APEDI and Fondo Agua Yaque del Norte through Partners of the Americas’ USAID-funded Farmer-to-Farmer Program. In their effort to promote education and conservation of the Yaque del Norte River's natural resources they want to build a interactive scale model of the entire watershed at the Parque Central in Santiago so that people can better understand the importance and magnitude of the river and the impacts that urban and agricultural pollution is having on its waters. 

The Yaque del Norte River Basin is the most important one in the Dominican Republic, with an extension of 7.053 km², equivalent to a 14.6% of the national territory. It impacts around 1.8 million people in 40 different municipalities from six different provinces. It has a length of 296 kilometers and feeds around 75 micro basins.  

Patricia visited the entire watershed, starting at the headwaters at Parque Nacional Armando Bermúdez. From there she traveled all the way to the delta as the river enters the Atlantic Ocean in Monte Cristi and everything in between, witnessing the impacts along urban areas and agricultural fields. While there, Patricia also gave a lecture at the faculty of Architecture and Design of Pontificia Universidad Católica Madre y Maestra (PUCMM)

This year Patricia along with two other BASE Landscape Architecture team members Cesar Moran Cahusac and MaFe Gonzalez had the opportunity to return and continue working on the environmental education project about the Yaque del Norte River watershed. Patricia, Cesar and Mafe spent two weeks interacting with local stakeholders, seeing different realities with immense social and ecological complexity, and proposing strategies to cultivate a harmonious relationship between the people and the river. 

During our stay on the island, we developed a conceptual design for a scaled replica exhibit of the Yaque del Norte River in Santiago's Central Park. The design includes a model of the entire watershed and zooms of different important sections of the river such as its origin in the mountains, its dams, its conditions in urban and agricultural areas, and its mouth at the Atlantic Ocean. The goal of the project is to educate and reconnect people with the river, to cultivate a desire to know and care for it, highlighting its ecological, social and economic value. We also had the opportunity to provide feedback on the construction of linear parks along tributary rivers and streams in the urban areas of Santiago. The emphasis is in creating climate change resilient societies beyond gray infrastructure -which we all know has many limitations- but through the creation of spaces that incorporate green infrastructure as well as recreational opportunities for adjacent vulnerable communities, while protecting them from displacement and gentrification.  

This experience was super enriching for BASE. We worked hard, ratifying our intention to use landscape architecture to offer and build spaces that host diversity -cultural and ecological-, that promote feelings of rootedness and belonging, and that seek to create societies that are more just, more empathetic and in harmony within people and the environment. We also enjoyed a lot the wonderful Dominican culture, its beautiful and joyful people, its flavors and rhythms, its Taino and Black history, and its natural treasures - we highly recommend a visit to Los Haitises National Park, absolutely wonderful!

The concept design we created will be used for fundraising, we hope the funding will come easily and to go back soon to the Dominican Republic to make this project a reality!

By Patricia Algara and MaFe Gonzalez

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