How Mexico City engulfed Lake Texcoco, from 16th Century to 2000

For centenaries, the Valley of Mexico was filled with a range of rainwater lakes. The Aztecs built their capital Tenochtitlan on an island in the midst of one of those lakes - Lake Texcoco. They built causeways and channels and floating gardens. The Aztec capital was like the Venice of Mesoamerica.

When Spaniards looted Tenochtitlan, they reconstructed a modern city with a grid. However, this new metropolis would regularly flood, eventually leading to efforts to drain the former lakes of the basin. Little by little, the Tenochtitlan city drained the lakes and extended out over the dry lakebed.

Mexico City still has significant flooding problems to this day, but it also faces a seemingly paradoxical situation: it's running out of water. All of the infrastructure proposed at draining the rainwater from the basin serves against attempts to preserve water for human needs. Nowadays, many districts in Mexico City don't have regular running water, and when the rainy period comes, those same districts get far too much water all at once.

To resolve the deficiency problem, the city started piping water in from far away and pumping it up from the aquifer below, creating yet another problem: the city is sinking.

As the water was sucked up, the ground began to break and crumble like a dried cookie, occurring at various subsidence rates.

Meantime, rainwater, instead of replenishing the ground, can't infiltrate it thanks to impervious asphalt and concrete surfaces above.

This post may contain affiliate links. As an Amazon Associate, I earn from qualifying purchases.

Comments

Find cities with similar climate

This map has been created using The Global environmental stratification. The Global environmental stratification (GEnS), based on statistical clustering of bioclimate data (WorldClim). GEnS, consists of 125 strata, which have been aggregated into 18 global environmental zones (labeled A to R) based on the dendrogram. Interactive map >> Via www.vividmaps.com Related posts: - Find cities with similar climate 2050 - How global warming will impact 6000+ cities around the world?

Moose population in North America

The moose population in North America is shrinking swiftly. This decrease has been correlated to the opening of roadways and landscapes into this animal's north range. In North America, the moose range includes almost all of Canada and Alaska, the northern part of New England and New York, the upper Rocky Mountains, northern Minnesota and Wisconsin, Michigan's Upper Peninsula, and Isle Royale. In 2014-2015, the North American moose population was measured at around one million animals. The most abundant moose population (about 700,000) lives in Canada. About 300 000 moose remains in nineteen U.S. states Alaska, Colorado, Connecticut, Idaho, Maine, Massachusetts, Minnesota, Montana, Michigan, Nevada, New Hampshire, New York, North Dakota, Oregon, Utah, Vermont, Washington, Wisconsin, and Wyoming. The largest moose specimens are found in Alaska 200 thousand moose. Below the map shows the size of US states scaled by the moose population. Via www.vividmaps.com

Human Emotions Visualized

Despite significant diversity in the culture around the globe, humanity's DNA is 99.9 percent alike. There are some characteristics more primary and typical to the human experience than our emotions. Of course, the large spectrum of emotions we can feel can be challenging to verbalize. That's where this splendid visualization by the Junto Institute comes in. This visualization is the newest in an ongoing attempt to categorize the full range of emotions logically. Our knowledge has come a long route since William James suggested 4 primary emotions: fear, grief, love, and rage. These kernel emotions yet form much of the basis for current frameworks. The Junto Institute's visualization above classifies 6 basic emotions: fear, anger, sadness, surprise, joy, love More nuanced descriptions begin from these 6 primary emotions, such as jealousy as a subset of anger and awe-struck as a subset of surprise. As a result, there are 102 second-and third-order emotions placed on this emo

Ecoclimax

Search This Blog