Protected Landscape of La Geria
To fight against the lack of water and the strong wind, the popular agriculture
of Lanzarote has developed its own technology based on the properties
of the piroclasts. The free surface cools down at night favouring a
great condensation. In this way, retained water in the pores is
filtered. During the day, only the free surface is subject to
evaporation since the heat hardly penetrates in the ground. The
technique consists of the construction of stone walls by way of barrier
protectors, generally open to facilitate the access against the wind.
Both objectives are successful in La Geria’s typical vineyards, where the grapevines are cultivated in holes in the lapillus, so that the roots can reach the fertile floor.
This
type of agriculture requires a long series of processes: To clean the
area, to bring arable floor from other points of the island, to cover
them with ash and to build the walls. The lapillus of better quality
for this use is the most recent.
The protected are a is located in the geographical centre of Lanzarote and it is occupied in great majority by the 1730-36 lava.
Besides the cultivated vegetation, the populations of the endemic bejeque of Lanzarote highlight.
It is also good to highlight the endemic cricket as representative of the invertebrate wildlife.