The Lake Titicaca Basin: A Pre-Columbian Built Landscape

Putting Ancient Agriculture Back to Work

he remains of an extensive ancient agricultural system built and used by Andean peoples centuries ago are found throughout the vast high plain surrounding Lake Titicaca in the Andean countries of Peru and Bolivia (Figs. 1, 2). Raised fields are large elevated planting platforms which provided drainage, improved soil conditions, and improved temperatures for crops, The remains of prehistoric rai...

Raised Field Agriculture in the Lake Titicaca Basin: Putting Ancient Agriculture Back to Work

Biocultural Diversity in the Southern Amazon

Recent studies in Amazonia historical ecology have revealed substantial diversity and dynamic change in coupled natural human systems. In the southern Amazon, several headwater basins show evidence of substantial pre-Columbian landscape modification, particularly in areas historically dominated by speakers of the Arawak language family. The headwater basin of the Xingu River, the easternmost of...

Modeling Past Episodes of Erosion in the Lake Orūmiye (Urmia) Basin: Analogues for Future Landscape Dynamics

During the Holocene Lake Orūmiye has been subjected to significant changes in climate. These have impacted the surround vegetation and runoff, and erosion rates of the surrounding basin. Shifts in seasonal rainfall from winter to summer dominated patterns have resulted in dramatic changes in the Orūmiye Basin’s vegetation cover from grass to shrub dominated communities. The degree of ground sur...

The history of South American tropical precipitation for the past 25,000 years.

Long sediment cores recovered from the deep portions of Lake Titicaca are used to reconstruct the precipitation history of tropical South America for the past 25,000 years. Lake Titicaca was a deep, fresh, and continuously overflowing lake during the last glacial stage, from before 25,000 to 15,000 calibrated years before the present (cal yr B.P.), signifying that during the last glacial maximu...