Water Stories - Core Course
Contents of the Course
This course has been carefully crafted to advance your understanding, knowledge, and abilities as quickly as possible. We have distilled decades of practice down into the most essential pieces so that you can develop and grow as quickly as possible. This course will empower you with the skills and knowledge needed to take effective action and achieve results.
What's Included
In the Core Course
12 Video Modules
You will be guided through the 4 different phases of growth within the course - Discovery, Experience, Advocate, and Practice. Each phase of growth is comprised of 3 modules, each composed of 8-15 video chapters
Additional Video Resources
For each module real world examples are provided as additional resource videos. These videos show the process of live projects, and cover the on-the-ground details you'll need to know to act.
Actions for Each Module
Actualize the learning from this course at each step with guided activities and actions. This is where the real learning takes place, this course is online, but more importantly it is at home.
A Community of Practice
Learn from and share with others going through the same experience from all around the world. The community of students each year is one of the true highlights of the course.
We Guide You Through
4 Phases of Growth
Phase One
Discovery
Module 1: Reading Land
The landscape is always speaking, it’s just a matter of developing the awareness to be able to hear. Learn how to read from the book of nature and see the land with new eyes, gaining the ability to read how water is moving through a landscape and how a landscape has changed over time.
Module 2
A Short History of the Water Cycle
Over the last 10,000 years humans have had an increasingly destructive impact on the water cycle, leading to cycles of flood, drought, fire and the desertification of ⅓ of Earth’s land. Learn the key factors that have contributed to this and how the water cycle has been fundamentally changed by humans.
Module 3
Water Cycle Restoration
Humans can have a positive footprint, and there are examples from all around the world. Learn from some of the best examples: what they did to be successful in their efforts, the underlying concepts and approaches that are shared between them, and how humans can be the keystone species in the restoration of the earth’s water cycle.
Phase Two
Experience
Module 4
Our Relations
Each kingdom of life offers its own abilities and opportunities. How we relate to the animals, plants, fungi, and other living organisms in our environment has a direct impact on the water cycle. Learn how our relations with each of the major branches of the tree of life have meaningful impacts on the health and productivity of our environment.
Module 5
Action, Reaction, Ripple Effects
This is the how of water cycle restoration. Learn how to create earthworks and take actions that have long term positive impacts on the water cycle. Learn how to create decentralized water retention landscapes and how to rapidly prototype your ideas; learning from the reactions and ripple effects that you observe.
Module 6
Skill Building and Mentors
Mentors help us quickly gain new skills and abilities and provide invaluable connections within our desired community. They are not always easy to find or remain close with, and it will often require some growth and compromises on your behalf. This module is all about how to find and endear yourself to mentors, so you can rapidly level-up your skills.
Phase Three
Advocate
Module 7
Earth Citizenry
What does it mean to be a voice for the voiceless? It requires civil courage, a clear understanding of truth in your heart, and a relentlessness to follow it. This module will instill you with the energy and skills you need to become a powerful yet respectful steward of Earth.
Module 8
Community Action for a Better Common Future
Communities can join together to create massive change, in fact it is the most proven way to create positive impact. Learn how to align your community through facilitated dialogue, in order to unify for meaningful change.
Module 9
Water Cycle Restoration at Scale
In order to achieve the amount of restoration that is necessary to re-stabilize our climate, policy change and legal reform will be necessary. Around the world there have been different examples, this module shares them along with a framework for you to work within.
Phase Four
Practice
Module 10
Craft Your Offering for the World
Now you know what you can do to make a meaningful positive impact, but how can you turn that into a vocation or career so that you are supported in your efforts? This module is all about how to shape your zones of brilliance, and interests around the water cycle, into meaningful work on a professional or personal level.
Module 11
Make Projects Happen
At the end of the day you need to pull it all together into projects that achieve results and are completed on a reasonable time frame. This involves a wide range of skills and abilities to bridge all of the gaps between parties and make change happen. For people who have never managed projects, this will serve as a primer, and for those who have, this will provide a framework and strategies to improve your project management skills.
Module 12
The Way
A disciplined psychological approach is essential to success in your efforts. There will be many challenges to overcome and problems to resolve. This module is an invitation to grow a strong psychological approach that will lead you toward success.
Not just theory - Action
Resources throughout the Course
This course isn't just about concepts and theory, it's about preparing you for action. That's why each module has an additional resource video, providing real world examples of the content in each module.
Construction Detail - 6 Pond System with Terraces
Full construction detail of our biggest and most complicated project to date. Includes; earthen dams, spillways, crossings, docks, monk pipes, water gardens, spring tapping, terraces, diving boards, and more...
Detailed Project Tour - 6 Pond System with Terraces
A nearly 3 hour in-depth project tour, explaining the process for designing and implementing these kinds of features. Get a taste of what's possible by seeing a recently developed project with a little time to grown in.
Spring Tapping for Drinking Water
Learn how to safely and naturally develop a spring for drinking water. Learn this traditional Austrian approach that maintains the highest duality of water for your use.
Earthen Dam Key Construction
See our preferred process and equipment for the highest quality and most efficient methodology for creating a small key-way earthen dam. This video follows the development of a water body showing the dam construction process and details.
Pond Project Moisture and Materials Case Study
How do you build a pond if there's no clay on site? This project shows the answer to that question, providing a great example for mixing, clay ratios, and moisture - all critical components to successfully implementing projects.
Reading Land Examples
What to look for and where to look when it comes to reading land. Join this real world example as Zach explains in detail how he thinks and works during a consultation, following three different water courses throughout a property.
Consultation Walk-Through
Experience this example consultation to see how the process works, the general flow, and what kinds of solutions you might suggest - with a 1500 acre organic farm in Tuscany, Italy as the example.
Urban Water Retention
This project shows a simple way to help hold water on the land from an increasingly hardened uphill landscape. As a result it created an abundant oasis of life in the concrete jungle, even during the winter.
Restoring the Tuscan Watershed
The result of a workshop in Italy, this video goes through some of the key leverage points to consider when looking at regional scale water cycle restoration - using Tuscany as an example.
A Business that's Symbiotic with Nature
Business and Nature are two words that are often thought to be in opposition, but that doesn't need to be the case. Learn about one business that seeks to be symbiotic with nature in the interventions and actions taken on behalf of their clients.
Your Instructor
Zachary Weiss
Protégé of revolutionary Austrian farmer Sepp Holzer, Zach is the first person to earn Holzer Practitioner certification directly from Sepp - through a rigorous two-year apprenticeship. This led to the creation of Elemental Ecosystems to provide an action-oriented process to improve clients' relationship with their land. The company specializes in water retention landscapes that harvest rain to create naturally productive ecosystems. Zach has worked in more than 30 countries spanning 6 continents, covering a wide range of climates, contexts, land-forms and ecosystems. After a decade of experience in the field, Zach, following the guidance of Sepp, created an education and training platform, to bring these approaches and techniques to the masses in order to revive the health of our planet.
- Real world experience. Working with the earth isn’t something that’s learned in a book or lecture, it’s learned through practice.
- Commitment to nature. Nature is first and foremost at the center of all actions taken. It is our responsibility to create a better common future for all life on earth.
- Mentored by Legends. Zach has had the incredible fortune to learn from, work with, and be mentored by many of the leaders in ecosystems restoration, including Sepp Holzer and Rajendra Singh.
Experienced Practitioner to Guide You
Unlike other courses taught by educators with little or no practical and real world experience, this course is taught by an active practitioner that has experience working with many of the world leaders in the field. Running projects in different parts of the world, working within different contexts and climates, and many years spent sweating and bleeding in the Earth are necessary experiences to be able to appropriately mentor others. Learn how to do it from someone who has done it, rather than someone parroting theories and concepts learned from a book. The experience that someone has can be seen in their hands.
Lessons Learned in the Field
A Message From Zach
“A friend asked me about my assets and how I had them held/protected. It didn't take me more than a few seconds to realize and reply that without a doubt my main assets are my own two hands, full of calluses, cuts, and thorns - the skill-sets and abilities that I've developed. Water Cycle Restoration - reading the landscape for the future potential and what once was, creating lush Oasis in places where the water has been robbed, finding and tapping springs for drinking water, rehydrating the earth. Earthworks, masonry, log framing, earthen construction, plant propagation, ecosystem establishment, reading plants for nutrient and pest cycles, gardening and farming - working hard from sun up to sun down, the way our ancestors used to.
This realization is an incredible feeling of freedom, as these assets translate through different cultures and currencies. I could go to nearly any inhabited place in the world with nothing and establish my value and worth within a community without too much time or trouble. That is my definition of freedom and investing in natural capital. ”
- Zach Weiss, your instructor for this course
Certification
We offer three different levels of certification: Water Advocate, Land Steward and Professional. In order to receive certification, one must complete the required actions for that pathway in the Live version of the course. Course alumni who display a high level of excellence and preparedness to start working in a professional capacity will be selectively awarded our separate Practitioner Certification. This is exclusively for individuals that we feel comfortable recommending to others to lead projects. There is no defined or set pathway to achieve this certification, it is only attained by proving your abilities through on the ground work and results. Once certified, students are listed on the Water Stories website as certified practitioners and recognized as leaders in this field.
Curated Content
Selected from Our Stories
We have selected a few of our favorite films and videos to help get you started on your water cycle restoration journey
Learn Some of the Basics
Core Concept Animations
We are proud to bring you several original animations, designed to explain foundational knowledge in a way that is beautiful to watch and easy to understand
Real World Examples
Youtube Videos about Our Projects
Our most important projects are now our students, but here are some examples of the work Zach Weiss has completed through his restoration-focused enterprise, Elemental Ecosystems.
Ready to Begin Your Journey?
Enroll in the Core Course Today
Joining the course is your first step towards becoming a water restoration practitioner.