Water Harvesting Strategies for Agriculture in the Canary Islands

Abstract

In the Canary Islands, there is a long tradition of optimizing water resources, to make the most of the available water for agriculture on all the archipelago’s islands. Each island has developed different systems of capturing water from the natural terrain and diverting it to crops. These systems have been especially successful on the islands of Fuerteventura and Lanzarote, the driest islands of the archipelago. Two water harvesting systems known as gavias and nateros have been developed on these islands. Gavias are used in flat areas and are larger than nateros, which are mainly used in mountainous areas. Both structures are designed to retain rainwater and divert it to a selected crop. Using these systems creates areas rich in nutrients and moisture, and reduces erosion of already arid soils. Through the gavia agroecosystem cereal and leguminous crops have been grown, while the nateros have been used to grow potatoes. Both are success stories for the local population on the most arid islands of the Canary archipelago.