Fields of potential: recovering hidden Chains of Ponds in a rapidly urbanising landscape

A Chain of Ponds is an ancient, mostly underground and almost forgotten riparian system that once sustained abundant, biodiverse life in many of the warm and dry regions of Australia. Unlike incised water courses, it forms swampy meadows that detain water and encourage infiltration, which cleans water and mitigates flooding and erosion. It also cools the atmosphere. This critical landscape system was once an extensive and prolific network of slow water movement in the Cumberland Plain in Western Sydney, Australia. It has now, unfortunately, been heavily degraded by colonising agricultural practices and Sydney’s inexorable urban sprawl. Drawing on the link between groundwater and a cool environment, this paper looks into the potential for regenerating Chains of Ponds where, due to urbanisation, hard, water-excluding surfaces and the heat island effect are proliferating. The research reassembled a Chain of Ponds history of the Plain from nineteenth-century parish maps and mid-twentieth-century aerial photos, supported by ground truthing and heat analysis. The findings form the basis of a discussion on the potential of this endemic landscape system, with its intrinsic adaptability, to address the vulnerabilities that urbanisation creates for both fragile landscape systems and the increasing population of residents and workers.