Fasilides Bath, Gondar, Ethiopia. 📸: From Wikimedia Commons.

Water and Land Restoration

It may seem impossible with the need for all these technical possibilities to recreate a lost native Highland Nature with its water supply. Therefore, if possible, a careful combination of well-being, pleasure and relaxation should be carried out, where real Nature becomes essential to create this pleasant environment for people. A possible example of a union between these human interests and Nature as the necessary support can be seen, for example, in beautiful manufactured ponds with surrounding gardens and arboretums where the abundant spring water provides Nature with irrigation to saplings and the creation of groundwater.

A Classic Castle with a Surrounding Spring Source

Therefore, the commonly occurring check dams represent an opportunity to recreate an environment that fits almost idealistically for both people and Nature. For example, placing a building like Fasilides Bath next to a stream on the high plateau would provide Nature with a fantastic water supply. However, in contrast to the water technology of check dams in ordinary, historic buildings, like Fasilides Bath in the picture above, would join as a water contribution to the surrounding landscape but also with the attraction's capacity as the most beautiful location for facilities. With dramatically classic architecture, this magnificent Castle lodge with a restaurant among the water entices fantasies and dreams in the cosiest and hiking-friendly surroundings within and for Nature of the wilderness.

Often, it seems impossible to stimulate private finance for

investments that prioritize the health of the population

and the country. Videos: The Castle of Highland Water

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

Highland Streams with Hiking Trails

However, these irrigation methods, shown as a classic levada here to the right, 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 delightful canals on the mountain. Hence, the nearly diminutive leaning of levadas enables both people's most pleasant promenade and the water's gentle flow. Such levada canals with a water castle would distribute the water over a high plateau with great beauty and assist Nature restoration.

Historical International Influences

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.

Magnificent Waterways in the Landscape

Thus, a well-tuned gradient deviation from the landscape's contour line allows people to promenade along the mountainside while enjoying amazing Nature views, well stimulated by the silent purging of the water's gentle flow in these canals. Thanks to the prioritization of the strength and reliability of these paths with their integrated levada canals, these reinforced waterways coincide with the suitability of dramatically beautiful, safe and very gentle hiking trails. Furthermore, these levada canals, with their outer reinforced walkways, prevent the torrential deluges from drilling many meters into the otherwise tender mountainside soil, thereby blocking the torrent's ability to tear up the slopes in deep furrows. Finally, with the indigenous vegetation, these levadas complete their purpose as the pure and potent source of irrigation but also deliver the water to be filtered and absorbed while transporting it to deep-lying mountain chambers. These are the naturally geological water reservoirs with their underground rock branches and natural aquifers of the mountain massif.

Water Creation with Natural Beauty

Due to these options, human assistance and technology to
heal Nature with classical irrigation reinforces the ground
with indigenous trees and provide the environment with
increased spring water in streams and brooks during
the long seasonal periods of sunshine.
Spring Water with Bath

Human and Nature in Harmony

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.

The Ancient's Water and Strength

The 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 their evolutionary optimization by cultivating the ground.

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 stabilizing and, for aeons, a welcoming ground for a dense reinforcing 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 reintroducing 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 Loss of Water and

Nature's Armoured and 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.

Ethiopia's Historic Waterways
The Waterfall: Blue Nile, towards the Capital
The Highlands and their Historical Waters
Entoto Natural Park and its Historical Water
The 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 Grande Nature History

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.

Ethiopia's Nature with Water Harbouring Functions

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 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.

Historical Methods for Water Conservation

It's a well-known fact that the natural Highland aquifers
are not sufficient to supply the large metropolitan areas
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 do not hinder 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.

Analysis of Nature with High Technology

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.

Climate: Precautions and Care During Rainy Seasons

The Torrential Precipitation

Although the Park is still adorned with a gorgeous and various terrain of highland freshness and enchantingly enticing deep mysteries of Twilight Canyon's adventure, this landscape is, of course, followed by some concerns during the rainy seasons' erosion with flash floods. These annual recurring floods often create severe erosion caused by the toxic effects of the eucalyptus tree, easily observed in the water running through Addis Ababa in connection with the rainy seasons.

Water Loss and Erosion

These torrential floods produce life-threatening situations since the rock massif is regularly deprived of the native vegetation and, therefore, unable to slow down the water masses speeding up downwards the slopes. Furthermore, these torrential rainwater quantities entail difficulties with powerful downpours during rainy periods since the profoundly erosive forces along the waterways entail an imminent risk of undermining the Capital's settlements.

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 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. Regrettably, humankind's harmful interference against this purifying and protective vegetation, soil layers and their combined connection of ancient synergy laid its feeble ground by misdeeds of culture's corruption with acute poverty from early civilizations up to modern times.

𝐓𝐡𝐞 V𝐚𝐥𝐮𝐚𝐛𝐥𝐞 K𝐧𝐨𝐰𝐥𝐞𝐝𝐠𝐞 𝐨𝐟 A𝐧𝐭𝐢𝐪𝐮𝐢𝐭𝐲

The Ancient Roman cistern
"Piscina Mirabilis"

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 essential 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

Wasted and Lost Groundwater

Naturally, in prehistory, the soil layers, with the reinforcing assistance of roots in the dense forest and its 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, the indigenous vegetation completes its purpose as the pure and potent source of synergy with the 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) - FW1 accumulates 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) clearly shows 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 displays 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 FW1 and 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 do not hinder 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 with 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 analysed with considerable help from the methods used for highly complex dam constructions.

CAUTION:

The Slopes' Environmental Restoration

Sudden influxes of water in the mountains can lead to instability and damage to the vacuum-anchoring suction effect, which is a result of gravity pressure built up over time in the layers of the hillside. Furthermore, a previous reduction of trees removes the reinforcement from roots, causing the slopes to become even more saturated and fragile due to the loss of strength from the tree roots and increased lubrication from the water masses. Furthermore, the stability of the native vegetation and trees' roots also prevents the water forces from speeding up and forming devastating torrential powers where water masses tear up the ground of buildings and simply drill deeply into the riverbanks of the settlements.

The vacuum-anchoring suction effect results from gravity pressure
built up over time in the layers of the hillside, where the evolution
is a candidate for suspecting large trees as essential for gravity
anchoring suction on the mountainside. However, reducing trees
removes the stability of roots while adding water from swales,
causing the slopes to become saturated and fragile. Due to the
loss of strength from ancient trees and their roots, difficulties
arise when restoring the slopes with swales due to their
dangerous impact of lubricating the slopes by deluges.
Keyline Design Permaculture
Terraced Micro-Basins
Planting Technology
Check Dam Swales
Planting Saplings

Landscape Restoration

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 traditional contour lines of the landscape's slopes. Since channels or swales filled with water constitute a dangerous lubrication with a low friction load on the slopes, an imminent risk for landslides prevails. Thereby, swales are an option on the planes, while separate berms win as an option for slopes. Of course, the more irrigation-effective method for sapling combines berms with keylines and even with swales, but then due to the risk of landslides only when the landscape gradient is very gentle.

Planting Saplings on Slopes

The previously mentioned half-circular small backfillings (berms) appear suitable on a hillside to protect the growth of individually placed saplings. However, appear instead of swales and keylines as more deeply irrigation effective when many saplings follow along gentle slopes. Where its technology is available, keyline design permaculture appears here as a desirable option because since they appear similar to the methods of swales, they are less obstructive and, therefore, an attractive choice on hillsides where swales instead would cause an overwhelming risk for landslides or lahars. Thus, while berms fit individual saplings, adding keyline design permaculture along contour lines often seems like an option since they heal themselves within the landscape while providing a slightly invisible gradient deviation from the landscape's contour lines. At the same time, even swales are an option on a pleasant leaning plane. Soil Suction:

https://www.sciencedirect.com/topics/engineering/soil-suction

Berms and Swales VS

Terraces & Micro-Basins

With hillsides' gradient diminutive in the landscape, swales are an option but not recommended on a mountainside. Therefore, caution prevails regarding this environmental swales restoration method due to the risk of landslides caused by swales creating too much lubricating water weight. Hence, a danger persists since these swales initiate landslides by the sudden water infiltration in an unstable soil configuration, especially on a mountainside. When the slopes are too steep for any modest restoration of the ground's stability, the classical option with terracing is often a secure choice. Here, with attention to keyline design permaculture deviation from the contour line, classical terracing obtains historical reliability. However, excluding terracing in a more gentle terrain, the keyline design permaculture remains a careful restoration option, where the ploughed grooves deviate slightly downwards from the mountain's contour lines. Thus, keyline design permaculture often remains the appropriate way to create a stable water supply and ground for the saplings. Therefore, mountainsides exposed to drought often require a keyline design gradient to optimize the water flow over the terraces. These methods and even terraced micro-basins often remain the only suitable option to obtain a sound foundation for the saplings on a steeper hillside.

Terraced Micro-Basins

A possibility of merged methods appears here where small supporting ridges in downhill surroundings (berms) help individual saplings, while integrated secluded swales contribute to abundant water supply. While there seem 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. Therefore, a picture appears where the terraced micro basins in their basic solution contribute as the more careful solution than swales. Hence, these micro basins give the plants individual protection and water but also receive a root-feeding water supply from the above terraced micro basins in a less hazardous solution to the water contribution than 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.

An Evolutionary Legacy from a Time of Natural Wealth

Podocarpus falcatus (P. gracilior)
The Location and Maps:
Biodiversity

A beautiful memory that attracts modern science and art

With glowing passion and warmth, it is still spoken among the residents of Entoto about when the water level a reasonable time after the rainy season still stood one metre higher in Entoto's deep streams and enchanting nature rock baths. It is thus quite close to the time when Entoto's mountain massif and its canyons could carry significantly higher water quantity and therefore supply the population in the Capital with fresh water to a much greater extent.

Conclusion and Wonderful Solution

This small Podocarpus tree carries a unique heritage that can be very important for the Park's legacy. This tree's seed was picked from the mother tree in the circle (B), west of the path, left of the area (39) and clearly above (38). The stalk to the seed of this tree is considerably more significant in height than the equivalent of the Juniper tree seed. With this uniqueness of raising their brittle stems, an excellent and traditional solution arises where Rosa abyssinica guards the seedlings thanks to the sharpness of its defending thorns.

Landslides and Erosion:

Demands for International Research

The internationally commonly occurring and historically merciless vigorous depletion of native trees on the mountains' slopes naturally raises complex problems of restoring the lost strength of enormous roots and their multiplying positive effects in stabilising the mountains' slopes. The loss of stability from the missing anchoring suction effect and the lack of reinforcing roots here appear to constitute almost insurmountable obstacles to restoring Nature on a mountainside. It often appears here that progressive international research is necessary regarding how these lost strong soil layers from the distant past are to be reconstructed in the best way. Using Nature's evolutionary advanced methods here would entail an ancient, slowly building anchoring of sediments with their suction properties and the assistance from the vacuum pressure by the ancient water-absorbing tree roots.

Nature Restoration Using Underground Modern Technology

Thus, from Nature's ancient past, mechanical compression of moraine and clay towards the mountainside gave Nature the required strength for an evolutionary and mechanical suction base for the continued prehistoric build-up of the ancient soil layer. All these evolutionary aspects of Nature and their prehistorical reinforcement of the ground seem, however, altogether too costly and complicated, as an intervention with an artificial rebuilding of millions of years of built-up ground stability in synergy with the evolution of organisms seems impossible to recreate today. However, some modern methods can often replace these ancient stabilizing sediments and the crucial strength from the ancient reinforcing tree roots. Gabion technology and rock anchors are current techniques that can regain safety with new ground for plants to grow on a slope. By backfilling and imitating ancient sediments supported by gabions and rock anchors, Nature gives the necessary time to heal the damage from dangerous landslides and the previous erosion.

Gabion Technology | Retaining Walls | Erosion Prevention

The Forgotten Sciences from Antiquity

Videos: Terraced Micro-Basins

Videos: Planting Technology

Videos: Water and Land Restoration

___________________________________________________________________________________

The Science of Indigenous Ancient Trees

DNA Selections of Seeds
(Oxford Academic)

Choosing the Right Mother Tree for Seed

The distant location but within the same country, developed fauna and flora have undergone an extremely long evolutionary optimization to best adapt to the unique condition of its geological and surrounding genetic characteristics. The unique habitat in a particular region within a country imprinted the native indigenous to receive their distinctive property of plant and wildlife depending on the remoteness of the unique climate.

The Importance of Seed's Evolutionary Heritage

Hence, due to this isolated location on a country's mountainside or within its secluded gorge, the endemic tree created the specificity of their genetic heritage and the soil's uniqueness. Therefore, the trees' evolutionary connection to a country's landscape makes a precious legacy for their seeds, which inherit well-adapted genetic characteristics to the location's biological uniqueness.

Assessing Seeds Based on the Climate Zones of the Country

Hence, the genetic legacy's impact in Ethiopia's various climates and altitudes creates trees that, although belonging to the same species, developed a difference in genetic heritage to deal with these different climate zones. Thus, the mistake of using the seed from a tree with its genetic origin from a moist and shady gorge as seedlings on a dry southern slope undermines these trees' ability to survive and other organisms, including humans.

The Science of Ancient Trees

The Sciences of Ancient Trees

The Scientific Importance of Old and Ancient Trees

___________________________________________________________________________________

Historical High-Tech for Water

The Forgotten Sciences from Antiquity

Roman Aqueduct - Wikipedia

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

A Wonderful Excursion to Search

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 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 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.