Rasisalai is one of the most diverse ecologies in northeast Thailand. This area consists of many creatures that depend on the river dynamic but, the Rasisalai dam blocked the river flow which caused obstacles and livelihood effects for people who live there. Consequently, this project will be a nature-based solution for resolving and studying landscape ecology.
Starting from landscape characterization, Riverscape is the most appropriate word to describe the landscape of Rasisalai. Riverscape has a simple definition: the river's landscape including all areas of the river basin and all factors that impact the river. For this area, the Mun river passed through the land from the Korat mountain ranges to finally joined the Chi river at Ubonratchathani. The river brings nutrients and diversity everywhere it passed lifting human well-being, especially the river dynamic, that causes wet season and dry season, giving different landscape functions for all creatures. The most outstanding landscape caused by the river dynamic is the Freshwater swamp forest, including Bung forest, an all-year flooded area forest, and Thamforest, a wet season flooded area forest which is suitable for young animal nurseries and nutrient transfer.
On the other hand, the industrial revolution influenced the agriculture section to plant more crops in a year and develop alien rice species to be grown instead of native species. Moreover, building the Rasisalai dam to collect all water in the wet season for crops water demand in the dry season instead of planting low water demand crops. As a consequence, the connectivity of rivers is gone along with the relationship between humans and rivers. The freshwater swamp forest is interrupted that the Tham forest which should be flooded only in the wet season to be flooded all year long. The fertility and diversity of the landscape also decreased and caused many problems for both humans and animals.
All problems lead to the vision for the project's solution that will bring back ecological services to the village by restoring the riverscape which supports the sustainable livelihood there. The planning is managed by phasing including Hydrological restoration, Forest restoration, Resilience agriculture, and Human welfare.
Firstly, operating the Hydrological restoration phase categorizes the forest ecology including Bungtham, Lerngtham, and Nontham depending on the land elevation. The different ecologies give different plant and animal species creating different ecosystem services. As known that the Rasisalai dam obstructed the river pathway and disconnected the river continuity, the policy of water management must be enforced the open-close time of the dam along with the season. And also the road rearrangement is operated to lessen effects of the road blocking problems.
After reconnecting the river flow path, water in the river will transfer particles from the upper elevation to the lower area, especially floodplains. Then, in the second phase, forest restoration would be operated immediately following the flooded area. For the first ecosystem Bungtham, hydrophilic plants will recover the fastest followed by water plants, weeds, and trees respectively. The second ecosystem Lerngtham which is a plateau area will be recovered from hydrophilic trees and shrubs, weeds, and big trees. The last ecosystem Nontham which is the highest elevation will take time for 5 years as a minimum to recover weeds, native trees, and full forest.
