THE SOURCES DAMS IN ALGERIA; A FORGOTTEN HERITAGE

Abstract

This paper evokes for the first time a hydraulic heritage. Forgotten and never taken into consideration, it is indeed the spring dams. The study was started since the year 2000 after the accidental discovery of a spring dam on the River Tiout (Naama Algeria). No note was written on this subject, a bibliography on the subject almost nonexistent; this pushed us to approach this work by traveling to the rivers of the northern Sahara. This first spring dam opened the way for us to understand the functioning of this type of hydro-agricultural development. The results obtained by this modest work are considered very satisfactory and allowed us to discover a part of these ancestral hydraulic structures. The system of spring dams as we have nicknamed it is composed of one or two dams intended to store spring water discharged by resurgences distributed along the river. The surplus water is transported by the frontal seguias to the palm groves located on the major beds of both banks of the river. Although the number is unknown, these spring dams have given rise to hundreds of oases along the rivers. Thousands of date palms have been cultivated on farmland developed on the major beds of the rivers. Irrigated continuously by spring water (very good quality) and temporarily by water laden with flash floods. These are the roles played by these hydraulic structures. No one can say how many spring dams have been built. However, this modest work has allowed us to have an idea of the distribution of these structures built across all the rivers of the northern Sahara.