The 250,000 date palms, and all the vegetation in between, get the water from 200 springs. The entire oasis is about 11 sq km, with Tozeur as the large centre, but there are small settlements scattered around the area. Around the city, nature is far from flat, and tiny valleys and riverbeds are found all over. Between the palms that are penetrating the city from all sides, a complicated irrigation system is found, together with plants and trees, that gives plums, grapes and strawberries. In older times, Tozeur had a very strict system of sharing water between plantations. In modern times, water pumps have made it possible with more intense agriculture. The sad result so far is a fall of the water table.
