This book offers a ready solution for those who wish to learn more about this fascinating part of our water history and makes accessible to the wider world the traditional knowledge gained from building and maintaining qanats for more than 2,500 years. There is much more here than a summary of the nature and distribution of qanats, and a more extensive journey through the philosophy, methods, tools, and terminology of qanat design and digging than previously assembled. Where does one begin to dig to ensure that the qanat tunnel will flow with water? How are practical considerations of landscape factored into the design? How are water quality and discharge measured? How does excavation proceed through bedrock and unconsolidated soil and how is this knowledge of geology and pedology acquired? How are vertical wells and tunnels excavated to maintain proper air supply, light, and water flow? How does one deal with special problems like tunnel collapse, the accumulation of gasses and vapors, and the pooling of water during construction? How are tools and gauges designed, maintained, and used? How have qanats been incorporated into other structures like watermills, reservoirs, ice houses, and irrigation networks? And how are qanats cleaned, extended, maintained through the ages, and incorporated into modern water supplies? The great contribution of this work is the story it tells of the ingenuity and practical skills of the qanat masters who for centuries and generations have cut an uncountable number of tunnels through bedrock and alluvium using hand tools and homespun solutions to problems that would vex the most experienced university-trained engineers.

Qanats are ubiquitous, yet unseen, and a clever way to create streams where none exist in nature. For 3,000 years, they have made life possible in impossible places and still sustain life and livelihoods in many countries today. After 30 years of field research, Dale Lightfoot provides the first comprehensive study of the qanat and sheds new light on their unique locations and distribution, their origins and history, their ecology, current status and use. Qanats are remarkably engineered underground aqueducts, using gravity to bring water to villages and towns where reliable flowing surface water is scarce or absent. Although an ancient technology, more than 46,000 of them still flow around the world today, with their sustainable nature making them a focus of renewed interest. Richly illustrated with images and a series of original maps, this is the most complete record to date of the locations and distribution of qanats worldwide, including examples from the Middle East, North Africa, Europe, Central Asia, China, India, Mexico and South America.

This Open Access book, building on research initiated by scholars from the Leiden-Delft-Erasmus Centre for Global Heritage and Development (CHGD) and ICOMOS Netherlands, presents multidisciplinary research that connects water to heritage. Through twenty-one chapters it explores landscapes, cities, engineering structures and buildings from around the world. It describes how people have actively shaped the course, form and function of water for human settlement and the development of civilizations, establishing socio-economic structures, policies and cultures; a rich world of narratives, laws and practices; and an extensive network of infrastructure, buildings and urban form. The book is organized in five thematic sections that link practices of the past to the design of the present and visions of the future: part I discusses drinking water management; part II addresses water use in agriculture; part III explores water management for land reclamation and defense; part IV examines river and coastal planning; and part V focuses on port cities and waterfront regeneration. Today, the many complex systems of the past are necessarily the basis for new systems that both preserve the past and manage water today: policy makers and designers can work together to recognize and build on the traditional knowledge and skills that old structure embody. This book argues that there is a need for a common agenda and an integrated policy that addresses the preservation, transformation and adaptive reuse of historic water-related structures. Throughout, it imagines how such efforts will help us develop sustainable futures for cities, landscapes and bodies of water.

Qanat is a gently sloping subterranean canal, which taps a water-bearing zone at a higher elevation than cultivated lands. A qanat consist of a series of vertical shafts in sloping ground, interconnected at the bottom by a tunnel with a gradient flatter than that of the ground. From the air, this system looks like a line of anthills leading from the foothills across the desert to the greenery of an irrigated settlement. Qanat engages a variety of knowledge and its studying entails an interdisciplinary approach. In a traditional realm, qanats are embraced by a socio-economic system which guarantees their sustainability. The facets of this socio-economic system operate closely together and make it possible for the qanats to remain into future.Veins of the Desert shows that digging a qanat requires a variety of sciences and technologies, though at a glance qanat is just a horizontal tunnel which drains out groundwater. Qanat is a feat of technology left from our ancestors; hidden underground, but its technical importance is apparent, not less valuable than such surface structures as bridges, castles, towers, etc. Qanat enjoys extended structures and sometimes its length reaches tens of kilometers. It passes through geological formations and faces different conditions and obstacles, so the qanat masters' efforts to solve these problems led to the accumulation of knowledge in terms of qanat construction over time, which has been handed down from generation to generation. Qanat is one of the most complicated traditional technologies, which require knowledge on nature ranging from groundwater to management. This indigenous technology used to bring water efficiently from tens of kilometers away to the thirsty lands.This book also gives insight into cultural and social heritages, which have crystalized around this technique.

This book tries to answer the question how different communities in such an arid area as the Iranian central plateau could have shared their limited water resources in a perfect harmony and peace over the course of history. They invented some indigenous technologies as well as cooperative socio-economic systems in order to better adapt themselves to their harsh environment where the scarce water resources had to be rationed among the different communities as sustainably as possible. Those stories hold some lessons for us on how to adjust our needs to our geographical possibilities while living side by side with other people. This work gives insight into the indigenous adaptation strategies through the territorial water cooperation, and describes how water can appear as a ground for cooperation. It explains the water supply systems and social aspects of water in central Iran. Topics include the territorial water cooperation, qanat’s, the traditional water management and sustainability, the socio-economic context, the sustainable management of shared aquifers system and more.

What if environmentally damaged landscapes could not only be remediated from an ecological standpoint, but also designed to replenish an entire community as well as the nature surrounding it? The Handbook of Regenerative Landscape Design incorporates ecology, engineering, sociology, and design elements into a new paradigm for environmental r