The New Normal: Three Decades of Hydrologic Monitoring in the Three Rivers Region of the Maya Lowlands

Summary

This is an abstract from the "Sessions in Honor of Dr. Fred Valdez Jr. and His Contributions to Archaeology, Part 1" session, at the 90th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology.

Thirty-year normals are statistical units used for hydroclimatological monitoring. They run for 30 Water Years (1 October through 30 September) representing statistically coherent temporal data sets. The most recent 30-year normal period was 1991-2020, and we have just entered a new normal of 2021-2050. As part of the original 1993 PfBAP environmental research team, I launched a hydrological monitoring program centered in the Programme for Belize Rio Bravo Conservation and Management Area. This was the first comprehensive long term environmental program to study these little-known tropical river, wetland, and groundwater systems: the Rio Bravo, Booths River, Blue Creek, and Rio Hondo watersheds, extending later into Peten, Guatemala. This paper presents long term hydrological trends observed over “our” thirty+ year normal period of 1993-2024, (1.5 K’atuns) and insights into ancient Maya land and water use patterns in this neotropical lowlands region. These findings include significant spatial differences in water chemistry from the interior uplands to the coastal plain, affecting potential types of water use (e.g. domestic vs agricultural) and impacts on geomorphic form and process. We have also found numerous forms of Maya-built water management infrastructure for water quantity and quality, including a large extent of previously unexplored wetland agricultural fields.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Sessions in Honor of Dr. Fred Valdez Jr. and His Contributions to Archaeology, Part 1   •
• Society for American Archaeology 90th Annual Meeting, Denver, CO (2025)

Keywords

Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 51584