Soils and Agricultural Carrying Capacity

Beach, Timothy; Luzzadder–Beach, Sheryl; Sweetwood, Ryan V.; Farrell, Patrice; Mazeau, Daniel E.; Terry, Richard E.

doi:10.5876/9781607325550.c009

Cited by 4 publications

(3 citation statements)

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“…Diversity and distributed participation in soil management practices certainly emerges across a large sample of lowland Maya cities, demonstrating that the urban Maya were often intensively engaged in soil management to support a level of cultivation [5]. While in some cases self-sufficiency might have been possible, these soil management practices also occur in cases where it was not achievable, such as at Chunchucmil (Mexico) [42,43]. In the case of Xuenkal (Mexico), residential groups are organised around karst sinkholes (rejolladas) that enhance opportunities for cultivation thanks to soil accumulation and moisture retention [44].…”

Section: Knowledge About Soils In Maya Societymentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Nonetheless, it is plausible that the populations of most lowland Maya urban landscapes partially depended on maintaining urban soil quality for sustenance (cf. [43,99]). Local production complemented their longer distance and international relations in the Mesoamerican culture area that existed in a similar fashion to today's technologically enhanced globalisation (e.g., [100][101][102]).…”

Section: Conditions That Promote Direct Engagement With Urban Soilsmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Engagement with Urban Soils Part I: Applying Maya Soil Connectivity Practices to Intergenerational Planning for Urban Sustainability

Vis

Evans

Graham

2023

Land

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Urban soil security depends on the means and social practices that enable multiple generations to maintain and improve soil resources. Soils are pivotal to urban sustainability yet seem absent from international planning advisories for sustainable urban development. Subsuming soils under broad and unspecific categories (ecosystem, environment, land, etc.) leaves soil interests indeterminate and largely ignored in urban planning. The absence of soils in sustainable urban planning advice permits planning guidelines that cause increasing land-use conversions which seal soils. Urban patterns of sealed and distanced soils, preventing access to and direct enjoyment of soil benefits, generate disengagement from soils. Despite fierce land-use competition, urban areas offer the greatest potential for soil connectivity exactly because people concentrate there. Based on previous work we accept that everyday opportunities to encounter and directly engage with soils in Pre-Columbian lowland Maya urban life rendered soil connectivity commonplace. Here, we review how the two original routes towards soil connectivity, knowledge exchange and producer–consumer relationships, reinforced and supported regular soil engagement in Maya urban practice. We frame our interpretation of Maya cultural values and urban practices in terms of leading insights from environmental psychology on pro-environmental behaviour and stakeholder attitudes and the principles of building resilience. This allows us to recognise that Maya urban soil connectivity functions thanks to the structural involvement of the largest societal stakeholder group, while imparting soil knowledge is entangled in shared socio-cultural activities rather than a task for a minority of soil specialists. The emerging Maya model for a socially engaged soil-aware urban society combines bottom-up practices and top-down social–ecological cultural values to increase resilience, to diminish reliance on long-distance supply chains, and to maintain productive human–environment relationships over the long term. As such it becomes a primary task for urban planning advice and guidelines to enable and support a widely shared and enduring culture of soil care. Urban sustainable development may only be successful if underpinned by a broadly carried increase in soil knowledge and awareness of intergenerational soil dependency.

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Section: Knowledge About Soils In Maya Societymentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Conditions That Promote Direct Engagement With Urban Soilsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Engagement with Urban Soils Part I: Applying Maya Soil Connectivity Practices to Intergenerational Planning for Urban Sustainability

Vis

Evans

Graham

2023

Land

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“…[39]). Although some soil cover can be inferred from topographical surveys or historical maps, reliable results in most cases would depend on excavation (exemplified by the Maya area [35,[40][41][42][43]) or direct historical accounts (cf. [44], Figure 155).…”

Section: Soil Connectivity In Urban Environmentsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Engagement with Urban Soils Part II: Starting Points for Sustainable Urban Planning Guidelines Derived from Maya Soil Connectivity

Vis

Evans

Graham

2023

Land

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Using the Precolumbian lowland Maya model of urban soil connectivity discussed in Part I, we review how soil connectivity can transition into urban planning policy and, by extension, could ultimately become codified as vantages and guidelines for urban design. In Maya agro-urban landscapes, the interspersion of open and green space with construction and paving provides edges (or interfaces) between sealed and unsealed soils at which the potential for soil connectivity manifests. These edges create an undeniable opportunity for urban planning to determine methods, guidelines, and conditions that can enhance soil connectivity. We argue that adequate attention to soils in urban sustainability goals would counteract misconceptions about the compact city paradigm and compensation for soil sealing in urban practice. Through preserving and increasing urban soil availability, proximity, and accessibility, advisory policies can stimulate shared values and everyday behaviours that reinforce the responsible and productive use of urban soils. Such urban planning can enable and encourage widespread participation in urban soil management. To promote policymaking on urban soils, we assess the importance and challenges of using urban green space as a proxy for the presence of urban soils. Our review suggests that urban green space offers high potential for use in urban planning to develop habit architectures that nurture soil-oriented pro-environmental behaviour. However, we also acknowledge the need for consistent and systematic data on urban soils that match sustainable urban development concepts to assist the effective transition of soil connectivity into urban planning codifications. Formulating adequate soil-oriented planning guidelines will require translating empirical insights into policy applications. To this end, we propose methods for enhancing our understanding and ability to monitor urban soil connectivity, including onsite surveys of land-use and bottom-up experience of soils, the mapping of the edges between sealed and unsealed soils, and using landscape ecological scales of analysis. In conclusion, we position soil care and connectivity as a primary task for urban planning and design and digest our findings and empirical vantages into concrete starting points devised as instruments to support urban planning in achieving soil codification.

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Agriculture in the Ancient Maya Lowlands (Part 2): Landesque Capital and Long-term Resource Management Strategies

Fedick

Morell-Hart

2023

J Archaeol Res

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Pre-Columbian food production in the Maya Lowlands was long characterized as reliant on extensive, slash-and-burn agriculture as the sole cultivation system possible in the region, given environmental limitations, with maize as the dominant crop. While aspects of this “swidden thesis” of Maya agriculture have been chipped away in recent years, there has been an underappreciation of the many forms of long-term capital investments in agriculture made by ancient Maya people. Here, we review the last three decades of research that has overturned the swidden thesis, focusing on long-term strategies. We demonstrate long-lasting agricultural investments by Maya people, in social capital including multigenerational land tenure, in cultivated capital including long-lived trees, and in landesque capital including soil amendments and landscape engineering projects, such as terracing and wetland modification.

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Soils and Agricultural Carrying Capacity

Cited by 4 publications

References 0 publications

Engagement with Urban Soils Part I: Applying Maya Soil Connectivity Practices to Intergenerational Planning for Urban Sustainability

Engagement with Urban Soils Part I: Applying Maya Soil Connectivity Practices to Intergenerational Planning for Urban Sustainability

Engagement with Urban Soils Part II: Starting Points for Sustainable Urban Planning Guidelines Derived from Maya Soil Connectivity

Agriculture in the Ancient Maya Lowlands (Part 2): Landesque Capital and Long-term Resource Management Strategies

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