Results of the drastic changes in climate may have led to the destruction of the ancient civilization of Mayan, reports National Geographic.
Researchers from the Center for Marshall Space Flight in Huntsville, Alabama, satellite launch program, known as SERVIR in early 2005 to helped to combat wildfires, improve land use and to find reasonable solutions in the case of natural disasters. Scientists link this program with projects in environmental diplomacy.
However the program also found traces of the hidden and possibly of the dire agricultural past of Mayans and uses the resulting lessons to ensure that modern civilizations will relate more responsibly in terms of modern climate change.
According to the program developers, Tom and Daniel Sivar Irwin, SERVIR aims to address a warning to the leaders of the countries in Central and South America, where the climate change can cause severe shocks to their ecosystems and biodiversity. If the governments of these countries heed the warnings received then the satellite data may actually save lives, the experts added.
There are more than a hundred assumptions about the extinction of the ancient civilization of Mayan, among them are devastating hurricanes, overpopulation, disease, wars and rural unrest.
However Sivar, NASA's only archaeologist, adds to the evidence of other explanations for the collapse of the great civilization, 'Our recent study shows that another factor may have been climate change'.
One current theory is that the Maya relied on felling and the firing of agricultural crops, but Sivar and his colleagues say that these methods can not support the population, which amounted to 60 000 people at its peak.
Scientists believe that the Mayans also developed a seasonal and flourishing wet land crop called vajos which constitute more than 40% of the landscape of the ancient empire. In most cases, cities of Mayan were surrounded by so called vajos, however archaeologists believed that these crops are not used by them.
The basic satellite photos show that the lands consisting of vajos are hiding ancient drainage channels and heavily overgrown fields. This ingenious method of cultivation is likely to have had the opposite effect. Satellite data also shows that the combination of the cutting and firing of agricultural crops and adaptation of wetland areas has caused a local land a distortion of thermal.
This could be the reason that caused many of the suspected factors that led to the collapse of Mayans. Even those who apparently are not linked by disease and war
