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Environment and Population: The Collapse of Large Irrigation Systems Reconsidered

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  31 January 2005

Stuart J. Borsch
Stuart J. Borsch
Affiliation:
Assumption College
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Extract

Irrigation systems were the first source of great abundance that stemmed from the Agricultural Revolution. They were also humanity's first great environmental curse. Long before issues of global warming and freshwater shortages haunted the modern world, irrigation systems blessed and bedeviled humans with their promise and peril. While a well-ordered functional irrigation system provided inhabitants with seed-to-yield ratios that were the envy of any dry-farming regime, these same irrigation systems could collapse in toto, bringing disaster on a scale never seen in rain-fed agricultural systems.

Type
Research Article
Information
Comparative Studies in Society and History , Volume 46 , Issue 3 , July 2004 , pp. 451 - 468
Copyright
© 2004 Society for Comparative Study of Society and History

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