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Canal Waterway

The channel Ourcq at Park Bergere. A view of classical channel in Europe: but artificial banks vegetated and lined with poplars. The canal is bordered by a roadway and / or former railroad used to haul boats. Note however that the correctness of the channel presented here is far from being the rule. It is permitted by the terrain here, but in very many places, the channels followed the contours of terrain and have a sinuous course.

Tavistock Canal ( Devon ), built partly in tunnel and partly on the hillside, to transport the gold was mined and imported wood, coal, etc.. It is currently used to power an electricity turbine. The British have developed from the late eighteenth ^century a very dense network of canals to serve the narrow gauge industrial sites: mines, quarries, factories ...

A channel is a stream artificial, that is to say, is partly or wholly by rights, open section, navigable or not.

Note 1: when the section is closed, we speak of pipe, conduit or pipe, pipe, tube, ...

Note 2: French, the word channel, as well as etymology of the word channel - the Latin canalis derivative of cannabis, refers to a sea passage narrowed. He gave English the word channel that has defined the channel, channel, ditch or conduit.

Summary

1 General
2 History
3 Non-navigational purposes
4 Challenges and benefits
5 Channel and Environment
Channels 6 and landscapes
Altimetry and seven different types of navigation channels
8 The channel, a book Promethean
9 Categories of waterways
10 Channels famous
- 10.1 In France
- Elsewhere 10.2
11 See also

General

One must distinguish between:

channels used to carry water - supply channels or irrigation - for which there must be an optimum flow rate,
channels where water is used to carry cargo transport - navigation channels - for which the movement seeks the simplest of these devices with minimum hydraulic flow.

In both cases, the channel serves as a conduit channeling water that must define the wet section to the nominal flow or passage of one or more device (s) which was defined template support.

A channel is a hydraulic machine built by man which the designer must ensure the permanence of a water supply sufficient for its function (waterway, inland water supply, ...) in the middle of a more or less difficult.

It may be a book:

entirely artificial,
partly artificial, the canal connects the existing water bodies (lakes or ponds), as the Rhone-Sete canal or the Suez Canal
a river or a river channeled all or part of its course. The man then modifies the geometric and hydraulic characteristics of a river, by dredging, digging, grinding enlargement (eg for "making great template"). The pipeline of large rivers (Rhine, Rhone) were accompanied by filling of meanders or "hairy" to "channel the water" in a core course obliged. It has generally sought to make it more straight for easy navigation at the expense of naturalness and ecological value and function of wetlands previously present,
mixed with portions of canalized rivers and artificial, as the canal from Nantes to Brest.

A channel can be:

level, as the Suez Canal or the Canal of Corinth ,
little variation in slope as the side channel to the Loire or the Canal Lateral a la Garonne ,
threshold of a tie, the oldest built in France is the channel Briare , and most famously, the Canal du Midi.

The channels are generally of fresh water , but the Corinth Canal or the Suez Canal , which does not leave the sea level, are salted.

History

Upon the Antiquity and the Middle Ages , the banks have been rectified, stabilized and managed to prevent flooding in case of flood , and to facilitate traction (haulage) and docking. These developments were complemented by the construction of piers, docks and towpaths , then by the creation of locks , or even of boat lifts , of canal bridges or tunnels, passages, and finally by water stations and items for transfer of boats and inland ports. The channel Noeufoss , dug 1000 years ago by Baudouin VI was originally a fortification (channel + wall), guarded by three garrisons to limit invasions comers from Flanders to Artois.

With the invention of the engine and to fight against the degradation of the banks by the " wake "caused by the speed of the barges and motorboats, many channels have banks of concrete and piles of metal.

Other purposes than navigation

Some channels are also (sometimes primarily) with irrigation ( canal irrigation ), drainage and control of floods ( Floodway ), transport over long distances for drinking or industrial water, evacuation mine water (eg in area of mining subsidence , lift the tablecloth, or reclaimed ).
More rarely, they can use in the production of hydroelectric power ( Channel EDF in the Bouches-du-Rhone ).
In one case at least one channel was originally built as a strategic line of military defense (the channel Neufoss , in northern France).
At the end of the twentieth ^century, a leisure tourism has gained importance on some channels, largely abandoned by the river because of their size became insufficient.

Challenges and benefits

The challenges and benefits related to the channels can be explained by their history.

Tools for water management: The first channels have often been channel drainage and / or irrigation, in addition to their role of transporting goods, animals and / or people (eg channel Neufoss that where it consists of Aa piped drains the network watringues ). The ancient Mesopotamian canals or Cambodia, Canal du Midi in France were first or as irrigation canals.

Industry Channels: The channels for transporting low-priced heavy minerals and many materials including coal , they have attracted many heavy industries ( metallurgy , coal chemical , glassware , stationery , etc.. in the ^nineteenth and ^twentieth centuries This explains the high degree of pollution of their sediment and certain land deposits of sediment (and 14% of the weight of the sediment stored in the field of deposition of Auby in northern France is composed of lead pure but there is also the arsenic of cadmium from zinc and other toxic. The soil is so polluted as part of the deposit nothing grows for 20 years. These sediments come from the Courcelles-ls-Lens , near the former envoy Pennaroya factory, now Metaleurop North ).. Other deposits containing only earth from the excavation are clean and have become havens for biodiversity.

Strategic Issues: Because they were vital areas and that they depended on many industries, the channels have been targets and strategic issues during the First and Second World War. Near the locks and old factories near the bridges that cross them, they may still harbor unexploded ordnance , and their surroundings and the consequences of war have been particularly important, especially in the red zone. Large projects very costly (eg, France: Seine-North Rhine-Rhone) are regularly discussed, studied and started.
The Romans had already envisaged a Rhine-Rhone by the Moselle. Similarly, Charlemagne had a draft Rhine-Main-Danube to 793, but whose early work by Mercator , were soon stopped due to collapse of banks and lack of means of pumping water and especially by the fact that we had not yet invented the lock-locks to overcome the downs. There are remains clearly visible, called Fossa Carolina at Graben (ditch Graben = German) in the region of Nuremberg.
Canals and river ports have regained their activity and interest with new self-propelled barge carrying containers and an early recovery of multimodal transport. The concept of sustainable development is not foreign to this revival of river transport: tonne transported by boat consumes 5 times less than diesel truck for the same distance, and the pollution is related.

Channels and environment

Waterways provide amenities (river tourism, recreation, fisheries) and ecological services contributing to the reserves and water supply, navigation, offering some alternative habitat for some aquatic organisms or waterfowl, but they are also corridors for the spread of invasive species and fish populations are reduced very stupid ^{Channels and landscapes}

In terms of naturalness and landscape , the canal can not be a substitute for wild rivers, and if the water is often turbid and quieter, and less species rich heritage, the channel contributes indirectly to reduce the impacts of landscape roads and environmental impacts of transportation;

each tonne carried by water consumes five times less than diesel truck equivalent distance. Traction from the bank if it was reused again reduce by a factor of four the need for power (compared to the same boat, motor). It was proposed turbine dumps large lock to produce electricity. And techniques available would still other energy savings, the benefit of a lower overall degradation of the environment and landscape.
The waterway helps reduce urban congestion (eg We must build the Stade de France and the Bibliothque Mitterrand to the proximity of the respective Canal Saint-Denis and Seine ).
The vegetated banks of some channels have a landscape value recognized and it is not unusual to see herons and other kingfishers live along the canals.

The designer Reiser said: "Living next to a national is hell. A railroad, you get used to. A channel is a landscape! "

Altimetry and different types of navigation channels

The channels are divided into bays , longer or shorter depending on the terrain, which are separated by locks enable barges and other vessels to change altitude. In Burgundy , in the Yonne , the lock sevenfold Rogny allowed to cross a height of 24 m in a little over 200 m, barges directly from an airlock in the other.

There are several kinds of channels:

Derivation.
It's a fairly short channel generally allows short-circuiting of a navigable river meanders. The Yonne , the Seine in its upper course, the Saone and are equipped with a few diversions.
The phylum.
He too is a short channel. It is in a cul-de-sac and can link a major city in the waterway closest.
Epinal , Montauban , Vermenton , Vouziers are well served by branch lines. Depending on terrain, a branch is fed by the waterway that joins, or rather by a river in its upstream point. In the latter case, it can serve as feeder food for the main channel.
The side channel.
As its name implies, it runs along a river and replaces the navigation on it. It is powered by its original upstream by the river generally, then at various points in his career by drawing down the tributaries of this river. It is sort of a bypass with a length exceeding 200 km. Examples: side channel of the Loire , the canal lateral to the Aisne.
The bypass channel junction.
This type of channel joining two rivers or ponds belonging to two different sub-basins where the terrain between them is weak. It starts from a point above the river A little down and accompanying a contour to the point where the curve passes on the other side of river. Eventually, we may have recourse to a passage in trenches to reduce the distance. From there, the canal descends rapidly toward the river B. The southern part of the Canal Saint-Quentin (or "channel of Picardy") and the Canal Sauldre belong to this type of channel.
The connecting channel to summit level.
Such a channel also attached two different rivers, but by crossing the terrain that separates them in the same way that a road crosses a mountain pass. The stream is called the highest summit level (it crosses the line dividing the basins of two rivers) and has to be constantly fed with water as this may dry out a bit at each lock. This requires, in the surrounding hills, creating a network of trenches and dugouts higher than the summit level to feed it.
The canal from Nantes to Brest, the reach of Hilvern , a "channel" of 64 km long distance as the crow flies less than 20 km can collect water from the Ust to feed channel, which snaked along the contour lines. The prototype of this type of global channel is the channel Briare which, since 1642, joins the Loire to the Seine via the Loing. Junction channels to summit level were built well before the lateral canals in order to connect up the river between them. Channels of Burgundy , the Nivernais , the Midi , in the Aisne-Marne , the Marne-Rhine , etc.. are of this type.
Ship Canal.
This type of channel can itself be of three types.
A. The first is a channel that allows the connection of a port town near the sea with it. It is therefore similar to the spur. The Caen canal to the sea and the Carentan are of this type.
B. The second type of ship canal is lateral to an estuary river boats prohibited or impractical because of its silting. It is therefore akin to a bypass. The channel Tancarville is the most famous example in our country, but we can also mention the Marans Ship Canal to the sea.
C. The last type of Ship Canal joins two seas together. It can be completely level as the Suez Canal or the Canal of Corinth , or at summit level, as the Panama Canal on its top powered by the Gatun Lake.

The channel, a book Promethean

Canal du Midi, south of Toulouse, now used for tourism and irrigation

The canal is an artificial river that Man is built to overcome the deficiencies of nature for its transport needs and irrigation. And build from scratch a river is a very Promethean approach which places Man at a godlike creator. They are tame, control, to tame the natural element as capricious and most vital of all: water.
Major construction work (excavation, waterproofing, masonry, etc..) Were needed to build the various channels since the channel itself with its locks, bridges, canals, aqueducts, tunnels, spillways, etc.. to ports and other hydraulic devices. The first dates from the Middle Ages , with Dutch specialists who swarmed their expertise throughout Europe, quickly followed by the Italians. ^{Categories of waterways}

See article ECMT class explains the different classes of channels in accordance with accepted boat templates.