La minería del agua en el Archipiélago Canario

Abstract

The Canary islands are a volcanic archipelago. This geologic fact, joined with a singular climatology, has determined their natural resources, principally the reception of the water flow. Water resources, at the beginning, were running directly to the surface by means of natural springs, in ravines. Because of the industrial revolution, up the 20th century the water demand increased; the type of agriculture, as the sugar-cane, was a big claimant of water. In these times, people were helped by the water pumps that the industrial advances were offering to the hydraulic Canary engineering. The first systems of water extraction were established in the first term with perforation of water galleries and wells in coastal zones. Wells were determined by the technical capacities of the water pumps. The present paper deals about the importance of the water galleries as element of development for the Canary society, economy and geologic heritage, all that suppose full knowledge of islands hydrogeology and water resources in western islands, principally, where this kind of water capitations are the principal one to obtain good quality of water resources. These water captations have evolved from the Iranian quanats up to the current captations with regulation of water flows by hidrological dikes.