TerraWiki

The Terra Humana Lexicon

A curated lexicon of the ideas behind our work, ecological and human restoration explained in plain language. Not an open wiki; each entry is written and reviewed by the foundation.

Agroforestry

A land-use system that deliberately combines trees and shrubs with crops or livestock on the same plot.

Assisted Migration

Deliberately moving tree species or their seed to areas better suited to the future climate, when they cannot spread there fast enough on their own.

Biochar

A stable, charcoal-like material made by heating plant matter with little oxygen, mixed into soil to improve its structure, water-holding and living activity.

Climate-Adapted Trees

Tree species and varieties chosen for their ability to thrive in hotter, drier future conditions rather than the climate of the recent past.

Drought-Tolerant Landscaping (Xeriscaping)

A landscape design approach that minimizes or removes the need for irrigation by using drought-tolerant plants, improved soil and mulch.

Dynamic Accumulator

A deep-rooted plant that draws minerals up from the subsoil and returns them to the surface through its leaves, feeding neighbouring plants.

Ecological Restoration

The practice of assisting the recovery of ecosystems that have been degraded, damaged or destroyed, so they regain health, function and resilience.

Ecological Succession

The gradual process by which the mix of species in an ecosystem changes over time, from pioneers toward a mature community.

Food Forest

A cultivated woodland of edible and useful plants arranged in layers, designed to work like a self-sustaining natural forest.

Hügelkultur

Hügelkultur is a permaculture method: a raised bed over buried decaying wood that stores rainwater and slowly releases nutrients.

Keyline Design

A land-planning method that reads a slope's natural shape to spread rainwater across it, storing moisture in the soil instead of losing it to runoff.

Millennial Olive Trees

Olive trees over a thousand years old, including Sardinia's ancient wild olives (olivastro) among the oldest living trees in the Mediterranean.

Monumental Trees

Trees officially recognised for their great age, size, rarity or cultural value, and protected as living natural monuments, in Italy under Law 10/2013.

Mycorrhiza

The underground partnership between plant roots and fungi: the fungi extend the roots' reach for water and nutrients in exchange for the plant's sugars.

Nitrogen-Fixing Plants

Plants that host bacteria able to convert atmospheric nitrogen into a form plants can use, naturally fertilising the soil around them.

Permaculture

A design system for sustainable human habitats modelled on natural ecosystems, developed by Bill Mollison and David Holmgren in the 1970s.

Plant Guild

A mutually supportive grouping of plants assembled around a central crop, so each member helps the others thrive with fewer inputs.

Polyculture

Growing several plant species together on the same ground at the same time, instead of a single crop in isolation.

Rainwater Harvesting & Swales

Shaping the land with shallow, level ditches and basins so that rain soaks into the ground where it falls, instead of running off and being lost.

Reconciliation Ecology

The practice of fostering biodiversity inside landscapes people actively use, rather than only inside protected areas set aside from them.

Regreening & Reversing Desertification

Bringing living vegetation and fertility back to land that has dried out or degraded, halting and reversing the slide toward desert.

Rehumanization

Restoring the human being as a conscious, caring participant in the living world: the human counterpart to ecological restoration.

Rewilding

A restoration approach that returns ecosystems to self-sustaining states by reducing human control and letting natural processes and native species lead.

Syntropic Agriculture

A regenerative farming method that grows food by accelerating natural forest succession, developed by Ernst Götsch in Brazil.

Tree Sponsorship

A donation to the foundation with a symbolic dedication of a real tree, never a purchase or ownership, and made without carbon-offset claims.

See these ideas at work

Terra Humana turns these principles into living land at Project Eden in Sardinia.

Explore Project Eden