Focus Article

Understanding ancient Maya water

resources and the implications
for a more sustainable future
Kirk D. French1∗ and Christopher J. Duffy2

Archeological research often provides a glimpse into the daily lives and genera-
tional outcomes of our collective past, but rarely does it lead to significant effects on
living (and possibly future) populations. Understanding the impact early civiliza-
tions had on their environment has been an active area of study since the 1950s. As
one of the most vital resources, water is central to many of these scholarly endeav-
ors. Research has shown that land use is a primary factor on the functionality of a
watershed. Our hypothesis is that simulating past climate and hydrology of a water-
shed with probable land use scenarios can create a virtual experiment to explore
a range of conditions for water availability and use in prehistoric landscapes. The
ancient Maya lived in a varied environment with highly seasonal precipitation and
landscapes that required vastly different water management strategies. Many of
these ancient centers maintained dense populations that ultimately forced unsus-
tainable land use practices. Our approach is to apply simulated climate projections
to evaluate the hydrologic performance of watersheds surrounding the Classic
Maya sites of Palenque, Mexico and Tikal, Guatemala. An important conclusion
from our work at Palenque is that virtual data can provide a plausible framework
for assessing the sustainability of water use strategies, past and present. © 2014 Wiley
Periodicals, Inc.

How to cite this article:

WIREs Water 2014, 1:305–313. doi: 10.1002/wat2.1024

INTRODUCTION Obtaining a deeper understanding of the inter-

play between humans and their environment is one of
M easuring and modeling the human impact on the
environment is a research goal widely held by
anthropologists, ecologists, hydrologists, and policy
the most important research challenges facing scien-
tists today.9 As world population grows, the resources
upon which we depend are often poorly managed or
makers.1–6 Current approaches to understand the
managed for limited objectives and thus become scarce
effects of human impact (climate change scenarios,
or only available to the powerful. This cycle is one that
land cover change studies, ecosystem services, etc.)
archeologists have seen time and again (deforestation
can yield useful data and quantitative predictions on
for the Roman Empire, Easter Island, and Cahokia,
the drastic effects we are having on our environment.
Illinois; salinization of agricultural areas of Ur and
Given the importance of these scenarios to present
the Abbasid Caliphate; decimation of fertile soil by
conditions, recently archeologists have also applied
erosion at the Maya site at Tikal; etc.).10,11 The unsus-
these approaches to prehistoric settings.7,8
tainable acquisition of essential resources for living
∗ Correspondence
commonly leads to explosive population growth fol-
to: kirkdfrench@psu.edu
lowed by decline, a primary interpretation of many
archeological projects in Mesoamerica.12–22
1 Department of Anthropology, The Pennsylvania State University,
University Park, PA, USA
2 Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, The Pennsyl- In our view, a new interdisciplinary approach
vania State University, University Park, PA, USA to understand the effects of human impacts on the
Conflict of interest: The authors have declared no conflicts of environment, both past and present, is needed. In this
interest for this article. research we take a geospatial—catchment perspective

Volume 1, May/June 2014 © 2014 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. 305

 Focus Article wires.wiley.com/water

to assess how historical land use and climate change

affect the availability of water for archeological sites
in the Maya region of Mesoamerica.7 The approach,
referred to as the hydroarcheological method, utilizes
simulated paleoclimate scenarios, watershed model-
ing, geospatial reconstruction of land cover, and the
embedded urban environment, along with traditional
archeological methods to provide a virtual means of
assessing the likely water resources of ancient cities.
The key element to this approach relies on The Penn
State Integrated Hydrologic Model (PIHM), a multi-
Calakmul
process, multiscale hydrologic model where the major
hydrological processes are fully coupled using the Palenque
semidiscrete finite volume method.23 Tikal

The hydroarcheological method was recently Caracol

applied to the Maya site of Palenque in Chiapas,
Mexico.7 The results presented views of water avail-
ability at the site through time given simulated land
use practices and climate variation. The method is
currently being used at the ancient Maya site of
Tikal in northern Guatemala (NSF #1211809), to
carry out a comparative study at a location within a
much larger watershed with different geological and
hydrological conditions. Our research has revealed
the potential for watershed-climate modeling in devel-
oping plausible scenarios of water use and sup-
ply, and the effect of extreme conditions (flood and
drought), all of which cannot be fully represented
by current atmosphere-based climate and weather
projections.7,24
For example, one objective of our research in
Palenque was to test the hypothesis that drought was
responsible for the Maya collapse. Did the Maya aban-
don Palenque in search of water? The archeologi-
cal implications for this noninvasive ’virtual’ method
are many, including detecting periods of stress within
a community, estimating population limits based on
water availability, understanding settlement patterns,
as well as assisting modern local populations in under-
standing their water cycle. The following sections pro-
vide a short synopsis of the ancient Maya, a brief
overview of both Palenque and Tikal, some perti-
nent details about the hydroarcheological method, fol-
lowed by a summary of implications for this research
in regard to assessing conditions for sustainability.
THE ANCIENT MAYA
The ancient Maya of Mesoamerica (Figure 1)
began constructing monumental architecture around
1800 B.C. in the Soconusco region of western Chiapas,
Mexico. This Early Preclassic (2000 B.C–1000 B.C.)
beginning was followed by several periods of growth
and decline over the next 2500 years, ending soon
Capan
FIGURE 1 | A map of the Maya region that includes southern
Mexico, Guatemala, Belize, western Honduras, and northern El Salvador.
after the arrival of the Spanish in the 16th century. It
was during the Classic period (A.D. 250–A.D. 900)
when hundreds of Maya centers reached their peak
of large-scale construction and population. Each of
these centers maintained a hereditary ruler, typically
a king, although queens did rule over a few polities
(including Palenque and Tikal). Aside from serving
as military leader, Maya rulers also served as ritual
specialists and water managers.25,26 Scarborough25,27
and Lucero26,28,29 have each suggested that it was this
elite involvement in water rituals that provided a vital
source of political power for the dynastic rulers.
Maya centers are located in an environment with
a unique dependence on the distribution of rainfall
and geologic conditions necessary to support water
resources and food for human consumption. In gen-
eral, approximately 70% of the annual rainfall in
the region takes place during a 4-month period, fol-
lowed by an annual drought lasting 4–5 months. In
addition to climate, topography and geology are
important factors controlling the orographic pattern
of rainfall and seasonal storage of water in bajos (sea-
sonally inundated swamps),30 as well as the control
on sources of springs and stream flow. The bajo edges
are where archeologists have discovered some of the

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 WIREs Water
FIGURE 2 | The interior of the subterranean aqueduct, OT-A1 (the
Palace Aqueduct), at Palenque. Source: Kirk French.
earliest Maya settlements.31 The distribution of karst
geology is another essential factor that supports water
supply in the case of springs or can result in deep infil-
tration and a loss of water during droughts.
As the Maya population grew, so did its demand
for water. In order to sustain life during the 4-month
dry season, the Maya mimicked and enhances natural
water storage features by engineering large reservoirs
at favorable locations throughout the landscape.27,32
They capitalized on water storage by paving and cant-
ing the surfaces of their plazas to funnel rainfall into
the reservoirs and reduce losses to deep infiltration.
Palenque (100 B.C.–A.D. 800), a UNESCO
World Heritage Site located in Chiapas, Mexico, is
ecologically distinct when compared to many other
Maya sites because of its water-saturated landscape.33
While the Maya of most other urban centers were
concerned with storing water, the Palencanos were
devising methods of managing their 3200 mm of
precipitation, 60 springs, and 9 perennial waterways
through complex system of subterranean aqueducts
(Figure 2) and drains.33 From 2007 to 2009, the
Palenque Hydroarcheolgical Project (PHAP) investi-
gated and modeled the watershed at this water rich
Classic Maya site.7 The useful results yielded from
PHAP suggested a need to apply the approach to a
larger site in a different environment.
In the Peten Region of northern Guatemala the
ancient Maya of Tikal manipulated their landscape
from 400 B.C. to A.D. 900 in a much different way.
Tikal, also a UNESCO World Heritage Site, is typ-
ical of the Maya Lowlands climate and geological
environment, that reflects a much lower precipitation
(∼1700 mm annually), and a dependence on reser-
voirs (Figure 3), and bajos, during the dry season.32
Researchers in Tikal have recently discovered small
Volume 1, May/June 2014 © 2014 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.
Understanding ancient Maya water resources
FIGURE 3 | A 3D illustration of the drainage patterns and reservoirs
of Tikal. (Reprinted with permission from Ref 32. Copyright 1991 xxx)
low-flow, seasonal springs or seeps34 which would
have been attractive to early settlers but insufficient
to supply a large population.
The ancient Maya center of Palenque was once
a major player in the Usumacinta River Basin and
politically significant throughout much of the Maya
Lowlands.35 Palenque’s geographical setting differed
from those found elsewhere in the Maya Lowlands
which is generally dominated by low topographic
relief. At Palenque, situated in the foothills of the Chi-
apas plateau, well drained karstic uplands allowed
their builders to take advantage of favorable con-
ditions for urban development, while also affording
access to the surrounding low topography of the plains
of Tabasco for agriculture.36 While the city of Tikal
grew in a diffused and rambling pattern adapting to
lowland environmental conditions, the inhabitants of
Palenque were confined to a small but well watered
location (ca. 2.2 km2 ) constrained by the limited space
available for urban development.37 This confinement
created a much more chaotic and crowded layout than
that of most other Maya centers and, when com-
pared to other Maya centers with similar influence
such as Tikal, exhibit remarkably different water man-
agement strategies.38 These topographic differences
also enabled the Palencanos to live in close proxim-
ity to their agricultural resources versus the more dis-
persed layout found at Tikal. Our study at Palenque
helps us frame interesting questions about the likely
hydrologic conditions at Tikal, including: (1) To what
degree is climate a determinant in the type and inten-
sity of water management practices? (2) Does land use
change drive scarcity of water supply (e.g., increased
erosion leading to down-cutting of the channel and the
water table) as has been suggested in the southwestern
United States?39–41 (3) Does land cover change induce
erosion? (4) Does the scale of urbanization evident for
Palenque and Tikal alter (1), (2), and (3)?
307
 Focus Article
Although limited in civic space, the reliable
karst springs at Palenque made them less susceptible
to seasonal drought conditions. Tikal on the other
hand, although not constrained geographically was
constrained by the degree of rainfall capture and
storage. Since Tikal held sway over areas upward of
50–100 km2 and populations of 50,000–100,000, our
current research is investigating the role climate and
land use might have played in Tikal’s abandonment
around A.D. 900.
THE HYDROARCHEOLOGICAL
METHOD
The main goal of the hydroarcheological method is to
develop plausible spatial representations of land use,
landscape change, and resource availability by using
watershed modeling and simulation programs that
capture long-term environmental change and response
to annual climate variation, including extreme condi-
tions of drought duration and flooding.24 By imple-
menting a virtual simulation of climate conditions
a catchment hydrologic model is used to generate a
geospatial dynamic view forced by plausible climatic
scenarios, land use practices of deforestation, ero-
sion, urban development, agricultural production, and
water management features.
The application of the hydroarcheological
method at the site of Palenque shed light on several
important factors. First, Palenque was most likely
not abandoned due to a lack of water.7 The results
from the modeling of the watershed under conditions
that accompany severe drought, shows that the site
maintains water output that is more than sufficient
for both personal consumption and agricultural
production for the city’s estimated population of
6000.42
Second, a surprising result from the modeling
revealed that land use can drastically amplify the
climate change impacts on the watershed. Take for
example two virtual scenarios of the Palenque water-
shed: (1) assume land cover of 100% tropical forest
as it was around 500 B.C. (no evidence of Maya occu-
pation) versus; (2) assume 40% tropical forest, 40%
deforested, and 20% impermeable cover (i.e., plazas,
buildings—a valid reconstruction of A.D. 600–A.D.
700 based on archeological data; Figure 4). Under
Scenario 2, a 2% increase in precipitation led to a
15% increase in the daily stream flow as compared
to Scenario 1. That is, deforestation and urban land
cover may have greatly increased the supply of avail-
able water at Palenque during A.D. 600–A.D. 700.7
Comparison of Scenarios 1 and 2 demonstrates that
changes in climate and land cover can equate to an
308 © 2014 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.
wires.wiley.com/water
Deforested
Urban
Forested
N
500 m
FIGURE 4 | Estimated land cover for the Palenque watershed from
A.D. 600 to A.D. 700.
amplified response in watershed runoff and water
availability at Palenque. Will this also be true for
Tikal?
In Tikal, the simulation of three different land
use and management strategies are being generated
using paleoclimate data from MarkSim (a stochas-
tic weather generator for crop modeling and risk
assessment based on the instrumental record of
9200 tropical weather stations)43 and the Bryson
Archeaoclimatology Macrophysical Climate Model (a
high-resolution, site-specific, macrophysical climate
model).44 This data will allow PIHMgis (the Penn
State Integrated Hydrologic Model and GIS)23,45 to
simulate the effects of land use, land cover, and chang-
ing patterns of soil erosion on water movement and
availability. Particular emphasis, again, will be placed
on evaluating the effects of extreme climate events on
water availability/distribution, but the key purpose is
to analyze the effects of land use change, primarily
deforestation, erosion and sustained agricultural pro-
duction throughout the watershed on regional water
availability.
It is important to note that we are using the
model to reconstruct an inferential window of possi-
ble Maya environmental land use and water resources,
to virtually analyze how what we know historically
about environmental, political, and population pat-
terns, may have played out spatially.
PIHM and PIHMgis
Major hydrological processes within the terrestrial
hydrological cycle operate over a wide range of time
scales. Interactions among them range from uncou-
pled to strongly coupled and a typical strategy involves
choosing a catchment scale compatible with the sci-
ence questions to be answered. In this case, we are
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 WIREs Water Understanding ancient Maya water resources

Transpiration
Precipitation

Infiltration

Evaporation
Ov
erla
nd
flow
Precipitation

Unsaturated zone Evaporation

Capillary lift Recharge

Radiation

Later flow
Saturated zone

Groundwater flow Precipitation

Channel flow

Bedrock

Ov
erla Evaporation
nd
flow

Infiltration

Recharge

Groundwater flow
Bedrock

FIGURE 5 | An illustration of Penn State Integrated Hydrologic Model (PIHM) unstructured grid and processes within each prismatic column
including: 2D surface flow, 1D soil column with macropores (three layers), 2D groundwater flow, and 1D channel.23

dealing with urban centers and surrounding water-
sheds. Numerical simulation of coupled nonlinear
hydrologic processes requires an efficient and flexi-
ble approach. PIHM23,45 (Figure 5) represents a new
strategy for watershed modeling where the subsurface
and land surface processes for water and energy are
fully coupled and spatially distributed. Our approach
reduces governing partial differential equations (PDE)
to ordinary differential equations (ODE) using the
semidiscrete finite volume method (FVM).46 The finite
volume elements are prisms, projected from the TIN
generated with constraints. The constraints are related
to the river network, watershed boundary, and ele-
vation contours. The model is designed to capture
‘dynamics’ in multiple processes while maintaining the
conservation of mass at all cells, as guaranteed by the
finite volume formulation.
The ‘control-volume’ in the finite volume for-
mulation is a prismatic or linear physical element,
which is also called model kernel with all the phys-
ical process equations and constitutive relationships
identified. PIHM and PIHMgis represent a commu-
nity modeling tool and GIS tool developed under NSF
Hydrologic Sciences funding for scientific application
to Hydrologic Observatories.47,48 This effort serves as
a test of our overall modeling strategy to demonstrate
the utility of integrated models for ungauged (or nearly
ungauged) basins, including the atmospheric forcing
to the watershed for water resource assessment. The
important distinction of PIHM from other watershed
models is that the physical layers and data-layers
for each projected prismatic element are explicitly
linked (tightly coupled) through a data-model and GIS
interface.23,45
PIHM and PIHMgis are open-source, integrated
and extensible GIS systems with data management,
data analysis, data modeling, unstructured mesh gen-
eration, and distributed PIHM modeling capabilities.

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 Focus Article
The underlying philosophy of this integrated system is
a shared geodata model between GIS and the water-
shed model (PIHM) thus making it possible to effi-
ciently handle the complexity of the different data
models, representation structures and model simula-
tions, and to rapidly produce new prototype scenarios
for climate and land use. PIHMgis has the capability
to perform complex data modeling (soil parameters,
geology, etc.), parameterization, hydrologic modeling,
data/model analysis and visualization with a tight cou-
pling of data handling, parameterization, and simu-
lation. The open architecture is particularly suited to
the rapid prototyping of model functions in support
of hydroarcheological modeling applications.7,24 The
reader is referred to Qu and Duffy23 and Shi et al.49
for details of the model and availability.
MODERN IMPLICATIONS
Archeology rarely has a beneficial impact on the lives
of the people who reside in areas near archeological
sites, aside from the economic incentives that tourism
sometimes provides or the few who are employed
by an archeological project as field workers, cooks,
etc. Understanding the impacts that land use and
climate change had on a watershed at a particular
archeological site can provide local inhabitants with
the knowledge they need to manage their water
resources. Today it is fairly common in many modern
cities throughout the world to closely monitor their
watersheds. Careful attention is given to correlating
precipitation, temperature, and usage to prepare the
public for a water crisis. These may come in the
form of drought warnings (i.e., deterring people from
watering their yard or washing their car) or flood
preparedness (i.e., another inch of rain will cause a
levee to breach).
Many cities and towns that are home to large
archeological sites are often in areas where monetary
resources are lacking. Take for example the modern
city of Palenque (5 km east of the ruins of Palenque)
and its 60,000 inhabitants. They still rely heavily
on water that is diverted and pumped directly from
the Otulum Stream located within the archeological
site boundary. In late June of 2005 the perennial
springs that feed the Otulum slowed significantly.
Because the town of Palenque lacks the resources to
monitor stream flow and rainfall, this minor drought
came without warning. Nearly a week past before a
regenerative rainfall relieved the area of the dilemma.
As the population of modern Palenque grows, the
stress on environmental resources will increase. One
of our future goals is to work with the towns people
and city planners of Palenque (and the Peten) with the
310 © 2014 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.
wires.wiley.com/water
FIGURE 6 | Empty containers waiting to be filled by the water
trucks alongside the road to Tikal. Source: Jay Silverstein.
aim of heading off future problems caused by droughts
and creating a knowledge base for water systems in
the area through technology transfer and education.
A hydrologic observatory would ultimately help the
townspeople understand their water supply and its
response to wet and dry climate cycles.
With a little over half the rainfall of Palenque and
few perennial water sources, scarcity of this vital liquid
is a part of life for the people of the Peten Region of
Guatemala. This reality has only become exacerbated
by agro-export commodity schemes that over time
have resulted in land use changes.50 These changes
combined with climatic shifts, population growth
(chiefly in-migration), and lack of infrastructure have
forced many local communities to depend on water
deliveries. It is common during the dry season to
see empty barrels, plastic containers, or oil drums
lined alongside the road from Flores to Tikal waiting
to be filled by large water trucks (Figure 6). These
same containers are generally kept near the home
and positioned beneath gutters to collect rainwater.
The need for sustainable water usage is dire in this
part of Mesoamerica and approaches such as the
hydroarcheological method is a move in that direction
(Box 1).
BOX 1
CULTURAL ECOLOGY
Over half a century ago the deliberate
transformation of archeology into a more
scientifically based discipline51 began in North
America. Ten years prior to that time, an innova-
tive explanatory perspective, called cultural
ecology, emerged as a viable theoretical
Volume 1, May/June 2014
 WIREs Water
LAND AND WATER
An Ecological Study of the
Teotihuacan Valley of México
A Film by William T. Sanders
The DVD cover of the documentary film Land and Water: An Ecological
Study of the Teotihuacan Valley of México by William T. Sanders, a
classic example of research that relied on cultural ecology.
orientation to explain human adaptation and
cultural evolution in both contemporary and
ancient cultures. These separate yet intertwined
pursuits created the foundation for a paradigm
shift in North American archeology that was
embraced by numerous researchers, ready for
a fresh take on the past that effectively com-
bined both ecology and culture into its explana-
tory framework. This approach has been suc-
cessfully used to orient the investigation of
ancient cultures through numerous archeolog-
ical projects over the last 50 years with the
production of abundant research that has fur-
thered the knowledge of the human condition.
Understanding of sociopolitical evolution and
conflict has been advanced through an empir-
ical approach to the studies of settlement pat-
terns, household archeology, demography, and
the environment, among many other topics. The
implications of human adaptation to change
using simulation and a virtual framework may
further the linkage of lessons learned, past and
present.
Volume 1, May/June 2014 © 2014 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.
Understanding ancient Maya water resources
The study of humans’ interaction with
their environment is called human ecology
and has had a long history with many trans-
formations along the way.52 Modern human
ecology, which includes cultural ecology, was
founded by anthropologist Julian Steward,
who believed that human adaptation was an
interplay between environment, biology, and
culture. Today, human ecologists rely on the
principles of empirical science in their research.
Many utilize biological principles, some use a
functional and materialist approach, while oth-
ers emphasize political processes.53 No matter
the differing approach, the goal of cultural ecol-
ogy is the same—to better understand humans,
their cultures, and their relationship with the
environment.
CONCLUSION
This multidisciplinary approach to research has the
potential to address several important questions about
the ancient Maya. How tightly constrained were phys-
iography and climate for Maya urban development?
How does this relate to implementation of monu-
mental public works such as the subterranean aque-
ducts or reservoirs? Can we resolve the question of
why Palenque and Tikal developed entirely different
water management strategies? Was sufficient water
available for maize production during drought and
does this vary geographically? How effective were the
water management features at Palenque and Tikal dur-
ing large tropical storms, which frequent these areas?
What are the hydrologic impacts of channelization or
reservoir construction? In Palenque we discovered the
effects that land cover change has on drought and
flood events. We then used that data to calculate the
effectiveness of the site’s subterranean aqueducts in
dealing with plaza flooding. Likewise, our research
in Tikal will determine the usefulness of their water
management strategies by ’virtually’ monitoring the
daily water levels of the reservoirs during extreme
events.
In addition to understanding the past, arche-
ological research utilizing watershed modeling can
provide the data necessary for implementing more sus-
tainable methods of water usage for today as well as
future.8,9,54 Cross-disciplinary investigations are the
best way to generate substantive answers to the com-
plex problems our world faces in regard to finite
resources. One of the most pressing issues in the next
50 years will no doubt be access to fresh water. The
approach discussed in this paper provide but one
311
 Focus Article
example of how understanding ancient Maya water
resources can offer a blueprint for a more sustain-
able approach to water. It is our view that significant
potential exists to enable other researchers to apply
the hydroarcheological method to other sites where
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