Water shortages can destroy cultures: Interplay between society and hydrological effects

The demise of the Maya civilization

Something really drastic must have happened to end the Classic Maya Period in the 9th Century. Within a short period of time, this advanced civilisation in Central America went from flourishing to collapsing — the population dwindling rapidly and monumental stone structures, like the ones built at Yucatán, were no longer being constructed. The reason for this demise remains the subject of debate even today.

Model calculations by TU Wien may have found the explanation: the irrigation technology that served the Mayans well during periods of drought may have actually made their society more vulnerable to major catastrophes.

….

Socio-hydrology

“Water influences society and society influences water,” says Linda Kuil, one of Prof. Günter Blöschl’s PhD students of the Vienna Doctoral Programme on Water Resource Systems, funded by the Austrian Science Fund, at TU Wien. “The water supply determines how much food is available, so in turn affects the growth of the population. Conversely, population increases may interfere with the natural water cycle through the construction of reservoirs, for example.”

Since water and society have such a direct influence on each other, it will not suffice to describe them by separate models. This is why researchers at TU Wien explore the interactions between sociology and hydrology and represent them by coupled mathematical models. The emerging field of socio-hydrology establishes mathematical interrelationships, e.g., between food availability and birth rate, or between recent water shortages that are still fresh in our memories and society’s plans for building water reservoirs. These kinds of interrelationships, combined with a large amount of historical and current data, ultimately yield a complex system that produces different scenarios of human-nature interactions.

Full article: The demise of the Maya civilization: Water shortage can destroy cultures: Interplay between society and hydrological effects — ScienceDaily

More about: the water cycle

• Figuring out the water cycle… still
• Severe Global Water Cycle Shifts Due to Abrupt Climate Change
• How large-scale water cycles influence earthquakes in California
• We can see how humans have altered Earth’s water resources
• Change in Water Storage Maps Added to Living Atlas
• Chief Arvol Looking Horse’s Message on Water
• Here Comes the Sea: The Struggle to Keep the Ocean out of California’s Coastal Aquifers

More about: Native Americans, First Nations, and treaty rights