Water and Land Restoration



Madeira's levadas originated from the necessity of bringing large amounts of water from the west 
and northwest of the island to the drier southeast. Wikipedia















Water and Land Restoration

Within the historical records appear several practical and aesthetical possibilities for restoration. These options for aesthetical restoration include water management, ground stability, and the most attractively pleasurable recreation paths. Another way of describing these methods for natural conservation is the effectiveness of the irrigation method when combined with very gentle and beautiful hiking trails above dizzying precipices. However, these irrigation methods most often require a more extensive and high-lying reservoir or natural aquifer source for reliable water flow. This method then allows a combination of pleasant hiking trails with microchannels along the mountainsides. Therefore the nearly diminutive leaning of levadas enables both people's most pleasant promenade and the water's gentle flow. Thus, a well-tuned gradient deviation from the landscape's contour line allows people's pleasure along the mountainside and the attraction of the water's gentle flow in these micro canals. Through these micro canals' associated need for strength and reliability, this need for reinforced waterways coincides with the suitability of dramatically beautiful and safe hiking trails where the steep slopes above or beneath these levadas often constitute impossible precipitous.


Water Creation in Natural Synergy & Symbiosis

Thanks to the remote geological evolution of plants' and ground-living organisms' development, they obtained the primary tool to open the Earth's surface layers' permeability. Thus, the roots of the native ancient plants liberated the otherwise water-repellent surface of the soil and gave the ground its water-absorbing properties. Hence, with their intricately stabilizing fibrous root system, these plants in ancient times made a symbiosis with surrounding microorganisms and initiated the beginning of time the path of the water to the soil and Earth's groundwater reservoirs. These prehistoric plants' roots thereby counter-acted the water resistance of the dense-packed ground and opened the soil's ability to stabilize porous permeability. This basic phenomenon between plants and soils allowed the water to pass to deeper soil layers and aquifers' regions. In this way, the origins of the naive vegetation and microorganisms in symbiosis interfered with the intricate work of cultivating the otherwise prevailing brittle and fragile soils.



Ethiopia's Historic Waterways

The Mountain and its Historical Water

Entoto Natural Park and its Historical Water.
This topographical configuration of Entoto Natural Park's mountain crest has the curious result that two raindrops that simultaneously moist the soil of Entoto's mountain crest, only a centimetre apart, will have quite different destinies. After a long journey through the River Nile, one waterway will reach the Mediterranean Sea. In contrast, the other watershed will pass through Addis Ababa, eventually evaporating in the Danakil Desert, as the Awash River never reaches the sea.

The Ethiopian Highland is the Legendary Water Provider.
However, this primary Ethiopian source of the Nile River is only one of several Ethiopian rivers that contribute to the total water in the Nile. Consequently, the total amount of water delivered from the Ethiopian Highland to the Nile is clearly more than only the water from the Blue Nile: the fundamental and historical source of the legendary Nile river.



Ethiopia's Loss of Water and

Natur's Armoured & Guardian Shield


The toxicity within the tactical defence mechanisms of the Australian foreign trees causes dramatic wastes of precious water in Ethiopia due to destructive downpours in seasonal violent rapid flash floods from the slopes, creating destructive forces of soil milling properties. This dangerous environmental erosive phenomenon is visually evident in the artificial eucalyptus plantings with its ground of brittle clay crust. Hence regrettably, an apparent phenomenon with the loss of Natur's armoured shield of native undergrowth is evident in the Highland's mountainous slopes. Thus, the foreign Australian eucalyptus tree's toxin eradicates the native remaining protective ground cover and thereby significantly causes the loss of valuable water by torrential freshwater rejections in short-lived sudden bursting flash floods of soil-milling erosion.


The Importance Of Indigenous Trees


This immense destructive environmental phenomenon follows the loss of Ethiopian native vegetation in the historical past and elucidates the importance of an endemic foundation for lush and soil-shielding undergrowth. Hence, scientific evidence appears since the indigenous Ethiopian trees characterize the historical landscape in dense covering and shielding vegetation. These native trees' diverse and widespread network of soil-reinforcing roots thus provide a firm ground for a dense network of native vegetation. Hence Ethiopia's ancient and evolutionary optimized Nature confirmed its ability to absorb the water to the ground, thus harmonically harbour and distributing the torrential deluges' otherwise destructive forces.



Ethiopia's Nature and How the Country Lost its Water


This image forms the basis for understanding
 nature's water-bearing body. The water is kept
  here in the totality of this image, where both
 vegetation, soil and rock make up this vital
water-bearing body to create this highly
valuable water-harbouring landscape.
Study of the water's complexity

Ethiopia's Natural Water Production.
Furthermore, history's misdeeds against Ethiopia's natural forest and Nature severely wounded the prehistoric ecological and geological heritage by interrupting the natural and critical processes of original soil creation derived from the endemic decomposing leaves and twigs. This genetically optimized process of the indigenous trees' downfall in leaves and twigs of the Ethiopian forest had the vital ability to hinder the erosive torrents' initiation and gave the trees their ground, thereby giving the soil's structure the required time to absorb deluges in this mountainous highland landscape.

The Natural Water Bodies of the Highland.
This historical malefactor against the original Ethiopian Nature severely weakened the county's original soil system in its essential function to lead and assist the rainwater to the natural underground aquifers. Hence, the severe reduction of the remaining soil's ability to receive moisture severely reduces the delivered water fed into the natural aquifers and, of course, reduces future chances for the citizens to obtain clean household water. Of course, this phenomenon also raises hindrances to reintroduce indigenous species. Hence, Ethiopia's groundwater loss derives from the decreased size of the water harbouring bodies within the Highland's totality of organic, sediment and mountain.


Ethiopia's Grande Nature History 

With Water Harbouring Functions

With the guardian and a profoundly anchored network of roots and stems, a complex picture of evolution's optimization emerges of Ethiopia's original vegetation. The endemic vegetation in the past of Ethiopia's highlands had a primaeval forest with an intricate network of stems and a deeply anchored network of roots functioning as countless efficient water collectors. Therefore in ancient times, Ethiopia's considerable rainwater resources were not so contradictory, and the reason was mainly the abundant natural and original vegetation of Ethiopia's highlands. This native Ethiopian vegetation served as a highly effective physical barrier, blocking the country's water masses from rushing down the country's slopes in the direction of Egypt. Due to these Nature's natural ground pipes of native vegetation, the seasonal deluges had sophisticated water receivers into Ethiopia's thick soil layers. The deeper groundwater reservoirs thus had the properties to harbour the downpours. Hence, this original vegetation functioned as countless efficient water collectors with an intricate network of stems and a deeply anchored network of roots, further stabilizing the landscape and giving tremendous strength against erosion and deterioration.


The body naturally harboured water, retained in the mountains' native highland vegetation, primaeval forest, and aquifers, can be considered and scientifically analyzed with considerable help from the methods used for highly complex dam and reservoir constructions.



Historical Methods for Water Conservation


It's a well-known fact that the natural Highland aquifers
  are not sufficient to supply the large metropolitan area's 
  total needs, but complex constructions are required.
 However, the endemic vegetation and soil remain 
 vital in the Earth's ecological process before
 storing the water for the country's future.
A lovely promenade to the reservoir at
Entoto Kidane Mehret (1)


Strength in Diversity and its Evolutionary Optimized Network.
What seems too complicated to describe in standard terms of biology can sometimes be given a simple parable opportunity. In short, a few stones is nothing of a hinder to a flowing torrent but very well by a firmly anchored uniform stone construction. Consequently, in sweat and thirst, the few rocks are lost in toil and poverty, while the opposite is usually the case with the anchored unit and its amounts of valuable dammed water at hand to use when the drought occurs.

The Close Relation of High-Tech to the Native Highland Forest. 
Of course, the natural forest consists of many complex biological phenomena with countless plants and organisms in a symbiotic relationship with a highly ancient evolutionary origin as water protectors for the Environment. Therefore, the native Highland, vegetation and primaeval forest can be scientifically understood with the help of the know-how used for advanced dams and reservoirs.




𝐓he 𝐓𝐨𝐫𝐫𝐞𝐧𝐭𝐢𝐚𝐥 𝐏𝐫𝐞𝐜𝐢𝐩𝐢𝐭𝐚𝐭𝐢𝐨𝐧

These annual recurring floods often create severe erosion, easily observed in the water running through Addis Ababa in connection with the rainy seasons. These torrential floods produce life-threatening situations, which are greatly strengthened by the fact that the rock massif is regularly deprived of vegetation and, therefore, unable to slow down the water masses speeding up downwards the slopes of the rock. Furthermore, these torrential rainwater quantities entail difficulties with powerful downpours during rainy periods and the following imminent risks of erosion near settlements.



𝐓𝐡𝐞 V𝐚𝐥𝐮𝐚𝐛𝐥𝐞 K𝐧𝐨𝐰𝐥𝐞𝐝𝐠𝐞 𝐨𝐟 A𝐧𝐭𝐢𝐪𝐮𝐢𝐭𝐲


𝐀𝐪𝐮𝐢𝐟𝐞𝐫𝐬 𝐚𝐧𝐝 𝐭𝐞𝐜𝐡𝐧𝐨𝐥𝐨𝐠𝐲 

Knowing these natural aquifers and their synergies with water technologies is antiquity's highly valued historical legacy. In their context, they are a well-known concept that helps to understand that a mighty mountain massif that receives abundant and regular precipitation with chilly temperatures also provides the conditions for harbouring this water.  The Forgotten Sciences from Antiquity

𝐔𝐧𝐝𝐞𝐫𝐠𝐫𝐨𝐮𝐧𝐝 𝐑𝐞𝐬𝐞𝐫𝐯𝐨𝐢𝐫𝐬
These historically and very early developed technical and geological-based methods for managing and saving enormous amounts of water that are often technically complex and aesthetically grandiose. The methods of this water technology vary significantly between different cultures and continents. Still, in the legacy of history, they are the basis of ancient civilizations' most important and original technological achievements. However, the quality and quantity of water depend on a well-covered landscape of healthy native vegetation: Videos: Soil Erosion Demo  Videos: Planting Saplings. Videos: Planting Technology



Natural and Clean Water with Native Nature

The consequence of ignoring natural sciences within Nature is grave because this groundwater phenomenon is of fundamental importance for any population possible to create their future health or prosperity. The vegetation and soil layers accumulating effect are crucial as both a water purifying filter and the only source distributor of the purified water to the natural underground reservoirs. To interfere with this purifying and protective vegetation, soil layers and their combined connection of ancient synergy is thus a human habit worldwide.


Wasted and Lost Groundwater

Historically, the soil layers, with the assistance of the dense forest and undergrowth, would block the water's possibility to speed downhill and, thus, harmonically gather the flow into slow motion and mountain-absorbing units. Unconditionally, this past harvest of native forest exposes and lays bare the soft soil layers, allowing the water forces to speed up and form devastating torrential powers. With efficiency, these mighty water masses tear up the slopes in deep furrows and simply drill many meters into the river's inflows. Finally, it completes its purpose as natural soil layer by filtering and absorbing these water masses and passing them on to deep-lying mountain chambers. These are the naturally geological water reservoirs with their underground rock branches and natural aquifers of the mountain massif.


The Production Of Clean Water

The Problem With Foreign and Incompatible Trees
and their Devastating Effect on the Water.
The Eucalyptus Problem

The Importance of Undisturbed Soil

 The No-till ground on the left side in images (8) -  (9) points (A) shows the familiar surroundings or the seasonal field at rest. Compared to the tillage field, the No-till ground provides significantly better resistance against decay and increases water distribution to the groundwater reservoirs. Pictures (9) show this resistance to the decay phenomenon (A) by increased resistance to soil loss and its ability to store water. This filtered water can transform into purified water within the hidden cliff chambers (aquifers). This filtered water in the study (8) - FWaccumulates during the rainy season, seeping in a continuous flow to the deeper underground. Therefore, cities below the mountain massif depend significantly on the Highland's native vegetation, including agriculture, through these significant-high altitudes' properties of geologically storing mountain water, hence conveniently extracted by traditional or advanced methods during drought seasons the following year.

The Ground's Importance for the Water

Here picture (9), it is clearly shown how the tillage field example (B) to the right in the photo means about twice the amount lost in the runoff in comparison with the No-till soil on the left (A). Also, the left No-till soil (A) with its water tray display considerably less erosive sediment in the water tray in comparison to the tillage field on the right in images (9) - (10) - (B). The vertical connection of the (FW) arrows 1 and 2 in embodiment (8) appears very clearly as an effect in the study of example (9). Models (8) and (9) confirm an apparent relationship following the waterways of FWand FW2, shown in the lower part of the picture (8)The Torrential Rains and Erosion




Humankind's High-Tech in Synergy with

Creation of Nature's Foundation

What seems too complicated to describe in standard terms can sometimes be given a simple parable opportunity. In short, a few stones is nothing of a hinder to a flowing torrent but very well by a firmly anchored uniform stone construction. Consequently, the few randomly placed rocks are lost in futile hardships, crunching the labourer by sweat and thirst in toil's despair and poverty. In contrast, the opposite is usually the case with the anchored unit and its amounts of valuable dammed water at hand to use when the drought occurs. Of course, the natural forest consists of many complex biological phenomena with countless plants and organisms in a symbiotic relationship that has a highly ancient evolutionary origin as water protectors for the Environment. Therefore, the water-retaining properties of the mountain massifs' Highland in synergy with endemic vegetation and its trees can be considered and scientifically analyzed with considerable help from the methods used for highly complex dam constructions.


CAUTION: 

The Slopes' Environmental Restoration


Landscape Restoration

  Planting Saplings  

  Check Dam Swales  

  Planting Technology  

  Terraced Micro-Basins  

  Keyline Design Permaculture  


There are profound contradictions in judgment in the use of berms versus swales. Hence, the core of this evaluation is a comparison regarding small surrounding ridges (berms) downhill of the saplings, which prevent water loss downhill the slope vs the quite contrary appearance of uphill water absorbing trenches (swales) just above saplings following pleasant and traditional contour lines of the landscape's slopes. Keylines appear here as a desirable option because since they appear similar to the methods of swales, they are less obstructive where they provide a slightly invisible gradient deviation from the landscape's contour lines.


Planting Saplings

Hence, while these previously mentioned half-circular small backfillings (berms) appear suitable on a hillside to protect the growth of individually placed saplings appear instead swales and keylines as more deeply irrigation effective when many saplings follow along gentle slopes. Thus while berms fit individual saplings, the solution of swales or keylines often seems more appropriate than berms when many saplings propagate along the keyline or contour line on a pleasant leaning slope. Of course, the more sapling protective method combines berms with swales or keylines.


Berms and Swales VS 

Terraces & Micro-Basins

Therefore, Incorporating berms with keylines on a gentle slope is an even more practical option for the same saplings settings, providing the plant with more excellent water access over a more extended period. Providing the hillsides' gradient are also diminutive in the landscape; swales are an option but not recommended on a mountainside. However, caution prevails regarding this environmental swales restoration method due to the risk of landslides caused by swales creating too much weight and even landslides by the sudden water infiltration in an unstable soil configuration, especially on a mountainside. In these precarious cases, when the slopes are too steep, terracing with attention to keyline design where the ploughed grooves deviation from the mountain's contour lines often remains the appropriate way to create s stable ground for the saplings. Thereby, exposed mountainsides often require keyline design together with terracing. These methods and terraced micro-basins often remain the only suitable option to obtain a sound foundation for the saplings and, thus, the water contribution for the saplings and aquifers.


Terraced Micro-Basins

While there appear to be profound contradictions between berms and swales, these two offer combinations such as terraced micro basins where this solution merges from the advantages of both berms and swales. Thus, while small supporting ridges in downhill surroundings (berms) help individual saplings, swales instead contribute to an abundance of water supply. Therefore, a picture appears where the terraced micro basins in their basic solution merge the most positive of the two solutions where micro basins give the plants protection and water but also receive a bottomless root-feeding water supply from the above terraced micro basins very similar to the water contribution from traditional swales. Therefore, the water masses within swales on a steeper slope could pose a direct danger of water breaking through followed by violent erosion, while berms do not pose these risks. Thus, these terraced micro basins constitute a careful but very effective balancing of the two mentioned berms and swales.

___________________________________________________________________________________


The Forgotten Sciences from Antiquity
The gradient of the Pont du Gard is only 34 cm per km, descending only 17 m vertically in its entire length of 50 km (31 mi): it could transport up to 20,000 cubic metres a day. The gradients of temporary aqueducts used for hydraulic mining could be considerably more significant, as at Dolaucothi in Wales (with a maximum angle of about 1:700) and Las Medulas in northern Spain. Where sharp gradients were unavoidable in permanent conduits, the channel could be stepped downwards, widened or discharged into a receiving tank to disperse the water flow and reduce its abrasive force.[32] Using stepped cascades and drops also helped re-oxygenate and thus "freshen" the water.[33]"


The Roman Legacy to Today Levadas

"In the sixteenth century, the Portuguese started building levadas to carry water to the agricultural regions. The most recent was made in the 1940s. Madeira is very mountainous, and building the levadas was often difficult. Many are cut into the sides of mountains, and it was also necessary to dig 25 kilometres (16 mi) of tunnels. Today the levadas not only supply water to the southern parts of the island, but they also provide hydroelectric power. There are more than 2,170 kilometres (1,350 mi) of levadas, and they provide a great network of walking paths. Some provide easy and relaxing walks through the beautiful countryside", Wikipedia


The Environment and Humankind's Future
with the Lost Knowledge from Antiquity

Although this Italian ruin was built in today's decaying concrete, the renovation of this mountain fortress (38) - (B) can stimulate an excellent foundation for a historical discovery of the lost recipe for Roman concrete. Although this historical concrete's millennia-old secrets still prevail as a crucial investigation of international laboratories, its deepest secrets persist. This potential rediscovery of ancient concrete with this lost high technology and historical treasure from antiquity would offer a scientific study of Roman technology within an educational project. The Lost Secrets of Antiquity



Restoring Nature with Concealed Technology

It can be very complicated to restore a severely eroded landscape by reintroducing native vegetation. Because the soil layers built up over millions of years have lost their original strength since the tremendous stability from the roots of the trees has disappeared. It is, therefore, a colossal project to remedy these prehistorically created soil layers tested by aeons of hardship in severe rain storms, flash floods or drought and thus evolved an optimization for their environment along with the design of the underlying mountain slope. Therefore, when considering a natural mountain slope in health, the conclusion follows with the significant probability that the most resistant soil layers remain; however, with the caveat that they only exist depending on the vegetation and organisms that created this soil quality. Thus, the trees' roots have, from prehistoric times, provided the mountain slopes with a solid reinforcing biological construction whose strength and toughness can surpass much in everyday civilization.

Regarding a mountainside through severe trials over millions of years, the result is a moraine with soil layers and vegetation that are incredibly hard tested and often evolutionarily optimized to survive in the specific conditions of their environment of varying rainfall, drought, landslides or lahars. After these lengthy trials by the aeons of Nature's try and error, what remains is thus a highly optimized habitat and, therefore, very difficult to surpass. These are such insurmountable circumstances that trying to succeed by replicating Nature's creation risks is overwhelming, resulting in frustrating failure when restoring a steep hillside. If human civilization is to overcome these difficulties, a great effort of human resources and technological stabilization measures is often required.

Where, for example, erosion has ravaged deep into soil layers and moraine, restoring the natural habitat of a steep slope is directly inappropriate by instantly replicating Nature's unique habitat. Recreating what Nature has done over millions of years may therefore require more civilizational technical measures, such as gabions anchored in the underlying rock or retaining walls and terracing where wildlife and humans coexist close to civilization's immediate needs. These anchored gabions can form an underground stabilizing foundation against landslides and further erosion while simultaneously providing the opportunity to rebuild the soil layers required for the native vegetation. Thus, these underground anchored gabions in the landscape represent a possible replacement in reliability and strength that aims to recreate the original landscape and Nature.


Topographic Contour lines VS

Keyline Design Permaculture

A keyline can be applied using topographic maps where the contour lines show an increasing distance between each other. This selected part of the landscape for keylines follows in much by the contour lines within a section of reduced slope gradient in an otherwise surrounding steeper slope. Thus, water-carrying keylines always come with the necessary support of the contour lines and constitute a place in the hillsides' valleys where natural springs usually appear. Still, the ploughed grooves of these keylines deviate slightly by almost imperceptibly away from the commonly known topographical contour lines. The deviation in the angle and curves of the keylines' ploughed grooves compared to the contour lines makes them appear diminutively different from the topographical contour lines, which are always shown horizontally on typographic maps. Thus, these keylines' ploughed grooves follow the slope with a slight deviation downward, thereby using gravity to allow the water to carefully and automatically intend to irrigate just above the saplings. This water's gradually falling line within and off the keylines then constitutes the prerequisite for the harmonious and calm flow of the water.


In this context, it is essential to understand that the maps' contour lines constitute an artificially simplified explanation of the landscape's complex three-dimensional topography. Thus, it is necessary to know that the terrain slopes downward even between two sparse contour lines in the map's landscape. Therefore, these pleasantly formed leaning ledges in the terrain with their less downward inclination landscape sections between two broadly separated contour lines invite the application to the application of these keylines. Hence, these keylines fulfil their function as harmonious water distributors in hilly terrain even though they are far from the water source.


In any case, since the source's flow towards and within the slowly feeding water in the ploughed grooves becomes subjected to mechanical resistance by irregularities and soil particles, it should consequently lead to the water flow finally draining and ceasing its flow towards these more distant extensions of keylines, especially in the outcropping formations of the ridges. Therefore, these remote ridges risk receiving too-small leftover water due to the already infiltrated water loss into the slopes' soil and the aquifers of the mountainside. Hence, the explanation follows here why the keylines' following ploughed grooves appear to deviate more and more from the topographical contour lines, as the keyline-designed ploughed furrows require help from gravity to bring a water flow even to the slopes of distant ridges. Thus, a visual inspection of these ploughed grooves from keyline design indicates that they rightly appear to seek further down and deviate more from these contour lines as they reach lower and lower towards the terminating shoulders of the ridges. The purpose of this slightly descending appearance of the keylines' ploughed furrows ensures that even the farthest from the mountain springs and reservoirs, yet distant and lower elevated peaks receive water in the landscape far beyond. However, although these longer-term keylines provide benefits and water to the mountain massif, direct irrigation only exists below the water's source. Therefore these keyline designs extract the water from the mountain's remote valleys with their naturally occurring rich springs and enhanced pond reservoirs.

Pinterest: Keyline Design Permaculture

Wikipedia: Keyline Design

Videos: Contour Lines & Keylines

Permaculture Research Institute:
"Before Permaculture: Keyline Planning and Cultivation"

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