NSF Minority Postdoctoral Research Fellowship: Modeling Traditional Southwestern Water Control Technologies: Flood Water and Seepage Fields

Dominguez, Steven, Arlington VA

Investigators

Abstract

Settlement distributions of prehistoric and historic agriculturists in the arid to semiarid Southwest have changed often over the past 2500 years. Resettlements may result from associated decreases in precipitation, although the mechanisms involved are unclear and not all climate changes resulted in resettlement. Determination of the causes of resettlements will require clarification of relationships between precipitation changes and productivity of traditional Southwestern agricultural technologies. This postdoctoral research and training project will address that problem by physically modeling two of the three types of agricultural fields responsible for most traditional agricultural production. Physical modeling will estimate quantities of soil moisture across a landscape based on precipitation, soil distribution, soil hydrologic parameters and land form. The field types to be modeled are flood water and seepage fields which are still in common use by the Hopi of northern Arizona. These fields will provide excellent test cases for modeling and will allow testing of the hypothesis that fields will form at the boundaries between individual soil units. Research will involve mapping of fields, soil units and associated catchments, as well as recording and analysis of soil hydrologic parameters. A digital model of each catchment will be constructed and simulations will be run using physical hydrologic modeling software.