Collapse of the Maya: Could deforestation have contributed?

Oglesby, Robert J.; Sever, Thomas L.; Saturno, William; Erickson, D. J.; Srikishen, Jayanthi

doi:10.1029/2009jd011942

Cited by 51 publications

(50 citation statements)

References 29 publications

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“…It is also worth noting that human activity (deforestation) has itself been identified as a possible amplifier of drought, particularly for southern Mexico and the Yucatan (e.g. Oglesby et al, 2010;Cook BI et al, 2012), but given the limitations of climate models for this area (see below) some caution needs to be exercised in making these attributions.…”

Section: Forcingsmentioning

confidence: 99%

The Holocene history of the North American Monsoon: ‘known knowns’ and ‘known unknowns’ in understanding its spatial and temporal complexity

Metcalfe

Barron

Davies

2015

Quaternary Science Reviews

148

155

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Evidence for climatic change across the North American Monsoon (NAM) and adjacent areas is reviewed, drawing on continental and marine records and the application of climate models.Patterns of change at 12,000, 9000, 6000 and 4000 cal yr BP are presented to capture the nature of change from the Younger Dryas (YD) and through the mid-Holocene. At the YD, conditions were cooler overall, wetter in the north and drier in the south, while moving into the Holocene

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Section: Forcingsmentioning

confidence: 99%

The Holocene history of the North American Monsoon: ‘known knowns’ and ‘known unknowns’ in understanding its spatial and temporal complexity

Metcalfe

Barron

Davies

2015

Quaternary Science Reviews

148

155

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“…Other authors (e.g. Oglesby et al, 2010;Cook et al, 2012) have modelled a decrease in precipitation in response to deforestation in Mesoamerica.…”

mentioning

confidence: 99%

The biogeophysical climatic impacts of anthropogenic land use change during the Holocene

et al. 2016

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Abstract. The first agricultural societies were established around 10 ka BP and had spread across much of Europe and southern Asia by 5.5 ka BP with resultant anthropogenic deforestation for crop and pasture land. Various studies (e.g. Joos et al., 2004;Kaplan et al., 2011;Mitchell et al., 2013) have attempted to assess the biogeochemical implications for Holocene climate in terms of increased carbon dioxide and methane emissions. However, less work has been done to examine the biogeophysical impacts of this early land use change. In this study, global climate model simulations with Hadley Centre Coupled Model version 3 (HadCM3) were used to examine the biogeophysical effects of Holocene land cover change on climate, both globally and regionally, from the early Holocene (8 ka BP) to the early industrial era (1850 CE).Two experiments were performed with alternative descriptions of past vegetation: (i) one in which potential natural vegetation was simulated by Top-down Representation of Interactive Foliage and Flora Including Dynamics (TRIFFID) but without land use changes and (ii) one where the anthropogenic land use model Kaplan and Krumhardt 2010 (KK10;Kaplan et al., 2009Kaplan et al., , 2011 was used to set the HadCM3 crop regions. Snapshot simulations were run at 1000-year intervals to examine when the first signature of anthropogenic climate change can be detected both regionally, in the areas of land use change, and globally. Results from our model simulations indicate that in regions of early land disturbance such as Europe and south-east Asia detectable temperature changes, outside the normal range of variability, are encountered in the model as early as 7 ka BP in the June-JulyAugust (JJA) season and throughout the entire annual cycle by 2-3 ka BP. Areas outside the regions of land disturbance are also affected, with virtually the whole globe experiencing significant temperature changes (predominantly cooling) by the early industrial period. The global annual mean temperature anomalies found in our single model simulations were −0.22 at 1850 CE, −0.11 at 2 ka BP, and −0.03 • C at 7 ka BP. Regionally, the largest temperature changes were in Europe with anomalies of −0.83 at 1850 CE, −0.58 at 2 ka BP, and −0.24 • C at 7 ka BP. Large-scale precipitation features such as the Indian monsoon, the Intertropical Convergence Zone (ITCZ), and the North Atlantic storm track are also impacted by local land use and remote teleconnections. We investigated how advection by surface winds, mean sea level pressure (MSLP) anomalies, and tropospheric stationary wave train disturbances in the mid-to high latitudes led to remote teleconnections.

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“…Not since the heyday of the Maya civilization (≈1200 years BP) has Mesoamerica experienced the level of deforestation that is presently occurring [1]. In Belize, this has been documented over the last few decades in a series of optical satellite remote sensing studies (e.g., [2][3][4]) that analyzed imagery from the Landsat Multispectral Scanner (MSS) and Thematic Mapper (TM) sensors.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Use of Airborne LiDAR to Delineate Canopy Degradation and Encroachment along the Guatemala-Belize Border

Weishampel

Hightower

Chase

et al. 2012

Tropical Conservation Science

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Tropical rainforest clearing and degradation significantly reduces carbon sequestration and increases the rate of biodiversity loss. There has been a concerted international effort to develop remote sensing techniques to monitor broad-scale patterns of forest canopy disturbance. In addition to loss of natural resources, recent deforestation in Mesoamerica threatens historic cultural resources that for centuries lay hidden below the protective canopy. Here, we compare satellite-derived measures of canopy disturbance that occurred over a three decade period since 1980 to those derived from a 2009 airborne LiDAR campaign over the Caracol Archaeological Reserve in western Belize. Scaling up fine-resolution canopy height measures to the 30 m resolution of Landsat Thematic Mapper, we found LiDAR revealed a >58% increase in the extent of canopy disturbance where there was an overlap of the remotely sensed data sources. For the entire archaeological reserve, with the addition of LiDAR, there was a 2.5% increase of degraded canopy than estimated with Landsat alone, indicating that 11.3% of the reserve has been subjected to illegal selective logging and deforestation. Incursions into the reserve from the Guatemala border, represented by LiDAR-detected canopy disturbance, extended 1 km deeper (to 3.5 km) into Belize than were derived with Landsat. Thus, while LiDAR enables a synoptic, never-seenbefore, below-canopy view of the Maya city of Caracol, it also reveals the degree of canopy disturbance and potential looting of areas yet to be documented by archaeologists on the ground.Keywords: Canopy degradation, Deforestation, Edge detection, Landsat, LiDAR, Maya archaeology, REDD+, Selective logging, Wombling ResumenLa tala y el deterioro de los bosques húmedos tropicales reducen significativamente la habilidad de este ecosistema para capturar carbono, y aumentan la tasa de pérdida de biodiversidad. Por lo tanto, existe un esfuerzo internacional para desarrollar técnicas de sensores remotos con el fin de monitorear los patrones a gran escala de las perturbaciones en el dosel del bosque. Adicional a la perdida de recursos naturales, la deforestación reciente en Mesoamérica amenaza los recursos históricos culturales que por siglos han permanecido escondidos bajo la protección del dosel. En este proyecto comparamos algunas medidas de perturbación del dosel derivadas de imágenes satelitales durante un periodo de tres décadas a partir de 1980, con aquellas derivadas de una campaña de vuelos con LiDAR llevada a cabo en 2009 sobre la Reserva Arqueológica Caracol en el oeste de Belice. Ampliando las medidas de altura de dosel de resolución fina a la resolución de 30 m del Landsat Thematic Mapper, encontramos que LiDAR reveló un aumento de más de 58% en la extensión de perturbaciones del dosel para aquellas áreas en donde se tenían datos de ambas fuentes de sensores remotos. Para la totalidad de la reserva arqueológica, con la adición de LiDAR hubo un aumento de 2.5% del área perturbada del dosel sobre la estimada utilizando ú...

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Collapse of the Maya: Could deforestation have contributed?

Cited by 51 publications

References 29 publications

The Holocene history of the North American Monsoon: ‘known knowns’ and ‘known unknowns’ in understanding its spatial and temporal complexity

The Holocene history of the North American Monsoon: ‘known knowns’ and ‘known unknowns’ in understanding its spatial and temporal complexity

The biogeophysical climatic impacts of anthropogenic land use change during the Holocene

Use of Airborne LiDAR to Delineate Canopy Degradation and Encroachment along the Guatemala-Belize Border

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