[mogget]

This is IMHO very much an example of "permaculture"-ish thinking, at least in the original spirit of the philosophy.*

Studying and leveraging natural dynamics (e.g. the role the glaciers previously played), paying attention to energetics (in the physical sense), avoiding waste by clever system design (e.g. harvesting the gravitational potential energy upstream that would otherwise be dissipated, volume/surface ratio, etc).

For those who like this kind of thing, ref. also the returns on swaling dry areas, Geoff Lawton's "Greening the Desert" work, Alan Savory's surprising conclusions about the restorative value of animals in Africa, etc.

Anyhow, what a great story. Thanks to the OP for the point-out!

* I use original in terms of the older original work by Bill Mollison and Masanobu Fukuoka, who had a more general systems take on ethics. More modern interpretations tend to be more political and also come to some more limiting conclusions.

ETA examples and fix grammar