Rice Polders behind Mangrove Dikes

Rice Polders behind Mangrove Dikes is an original illustration set in Cumbidjã River, Tombali, Guinea-Bissau. It lies in the tropics, where the climate is tropical monsoon — a short drier season inside a wet year.

Rectangular green rice plots sit just behind long hand-built earthen dikes along a broad tidal creek. Wooden sluice gates interrupt the embankments, dark mangrove roots line the brackish channel, farmers repair one low wall, and a patchwork of wet fields extends across the nearly level coastal plain.

Why are rice fields sealed behind dikes beside a tidal mangrove river?

Mangrove soils are fertile but tidal salt water would kill rice, so farmers enclose bolanhas with anti-salt dikes and manage gates to drain rainwater while excluding the returning tide. The flat estuary makes large fields possible yet leaves almost no natural elevation, turning every breach into a threat and repeated maintenance into part of cultivation. Mangrove fringe, tidal creeks, rectangular polders, and hand-worked dikes reveal Guinea-Bissau's coastal rice system.

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