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They weren't intensively farming the area. What he (and I) meant was "sustain an agricultural population." They were divvying up water rights but it was recogni
by R0b0t1 5y ago
They weren't intensively farming the area. What he (and I) meant was "sustain an agricultural population." They were divvying up water rights but it was recognizable very early on that even modest farming could deplete the aquifer faster than it regenerates.
I've edited it for clarity, but this is one of those times to refer to the site guidelines. You're supposed to look for the most charitable interpretation of a comment's phrasing -- what are the odds I somehow didn't know Indians exist?
- AlotOfReading 5y agoI presumed you knew about native Americans, but that doesn't mean the geologist considered them. Anyway, it's still relevant since many populations in the Sonoran and Mojave had highly intensive traditional agriculture. I assume those are the areas that were being discussed? The lack of what we'd traditionally call intensive agriculture in places like central valley is mainly just a historical semantic distinction. They cultivated and intensively shaped their local environments to maximize food production, but they weren't herding or clearing fields so it doesn't count.
- redis_mlc 5y ago