Guidelines

Improving Spate Irrigation
Spate irrigation is an ancient form of water management, involving the diversion of flashy spate
floods running off from mountainous catchments, using simple deflectors of bunds constructed
from sand, stones and brushwood on the beds of normally dry wadis. Flood flows, usually
flowing for only a few hours with appreciable discharges, and with recession flows lasting for
only one to a few days, are channelled through short steep canals to bunded basins, which are
flooded to depths of 0.5 m or more. Subsistence crops, often sorghum, are planted only after
irrigation has occurred. Crops are grown from one or more irrigations using residual moisture
stored in the deep alluvial soils formed from the sediments deposited from previous irrigations.
Spate systems “grow” their own soils, and rely on nutrients transported with sediments from
upstream catchments to maintain fertility.

Community Spate Irrigation Guidelines where prepared by HR Wallingford and MetaMeta under support by DFID's Knowledge And Reseatch Program (2001-2004). Read the full report >>> (pdf) .  An updated version of the guidelines are being prepared with the help of Maher Salman (FAO) and Abraham Mehari Haile (Spate Network/ IHE/ MetaMeta).