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[Torham]

I have read the recent update from toady (about the surface water and human settlements) and i might have thought of an alternative. Instead of covering all the surface in brooks and streams why not give humans ability to tap into the ubiquitous aquifers = well? Even a small hand operated well can supply enough water to water a decent farm plot (personal experience), especially if the aquifers are infinite ( as it is now). A donkey or a horse drawn well can supply a whole village and provide enough water for the crops.

[NW_Kohaku]

From that same post by Toady:

There should be non-desert areas without surface water based on the geology, but additional underground water behavior is for later, so we're now be-rivered.

I'm pretty sure this is only meant as a placeholder for a better system, which presumably includes aquifers as that "underground water". 

On top of that, though, there was this in the Future of the Fortress thread:

Spawning extra brooks and rivers is - in my opinion - a bad way. Normally Rain and aquifer-water should be enough for farming and if not herding sheep might be a good solution. I would say that the villages could have one mayor up to one well per field. Dry regions also developed often enough crops that could coop with the dryness. Hehe an droughts were and are a problem you have to deal with.

Desert farmers, which basically means the likes of the Middle East or North Africa, farmed their land either through irrigation by rivers (especially by digging canals, which were giant state projects to help feed their populations) or through the use of springs and wells tapping aquifers.  In a DF unlimited aquifer landscape, a desert aquifer, of course, carries none of the risk of depletion (and doesn't have that pesky iron oxide dissolved in the water, either).

I honestly think that a better way to handle keeping enough water around for farmers (other than limitless aquifers, which aren't nearly the hassle when you don't need to dig beneath them, anyway) would be to have farms that are open to air simply take rain water as effective irrigation.  That way, you can have farms that grow crops appropriate for the rainfall of the region that grow there (if, perhaps, not the most regular crop yields because there isn't absolute control over the water supply).

We already have civs that make rediculous numbers of bridges because murky pools are so common.  What would really help is if we had civs that would dig canals on the worldmaps for the irrigation of otherwise inhospitable regions, such as those deserts.

[Torham]

Sorry, my bad. Didn't do the research prior to creating my first topic.