Pre-Historic Water Use in Arid West (U.S.)
Archeologists have long known of a wide-range of water-capture/irrigation strategies in pre-historic cultures of the region now called the American West. Some of the most visible evidence is found in the Southwest region, where arid conditions required irrigation in order to ensure reliable crop production. The following is an overview of early Zuni agriculture in the Northern New Mexico region.
Early Zuni Agriculture in the Southwest (From: Combating desertification with indigenous agricultural technology at Zuni Pueblo, New Mexico,by Jay B. Norton and Jonathan A. Sandor)
Introduction
Desertification in the southwestern United States is a controversial issue: is degrading environmental quality the result of human activity or of natural climatic and erosional cycles? A protracted court case, the United States vs. the Zuni Tribe, provides a compelling illustration of the polarized nature of the controversy. Advocates of human activity as the cause of desertification prevailed in this case when the U.S. government paid retribution to the Zuni tribe, creating the Zuni Land Conservation Act of 1990 (Hart, 1995).
As a result of the Act, the Zuni Conservation Project (ZCP) has begun work toward sustainable natural resource development on the reservation (Enote et al., 1993). The approach combines local knowledge with scientific study of natural resources to fight desertification and to revitalize agriculture as an economic entity. The once important traditional practice of runoff agriculture holds promise for both endeavors: combating desertification through mitigation of erosion, sedimentation and flooding while improving crop and forage production by utilizing eroded soil and water resources.
While large scale movement of sediment has been a dominant process in formation of the Southwest's mesas and canyons through geologic time, the construction of permanent reservoirs turned this natural process into an expensive problem. In their eagerness to capture and store valuable water resources, early government engineers on the Zuni Reservation failed to recognize the other valuable resource leaving the uplands with runoff or the menace it poses to permanent dams across Zuni water courses. Soil eroded from Zuni lands has filled every impoundment built for irrigation, flood control, or erosion control, rendering them nearly useless and often causing washouts and further erosion of stream courses.
This article describes an interdisciplinary effort that recognizes the value of local knowledge in dealing with local natural resource issues. The effort combines Zuni farmers, Tribal natural resource managers, and research sponsored by the National Science Foundation. …for full article , go to: The Arid Lands Newsletter, No. 41, Spring/Summer 1997.
For more information on Irrigation go to WWDL Search
