A Land of Illusions and Thin Air

Abstract

A brief historical and ecological perspective of the region of Cuatro Ciénegas is presented. It starts with the deep time during the assemblage of North America and how different terranes converge in Mexico trapping ancient waterways. I contrast these deep time events with the more recent end of the Quaternary where humans arrived in North America at the end of the last glaciation. By then, the continents attained their present distribution. At the time of human arrival, climate and ecosystems were rapidly changing, and extensive natural and anthropogenic alterations occurred, including the extinction of megafauna and the replacement by drylands of forest and woodlands. Civilizations developed across the Americas. With the arrival of Europeans, a sudden change in cultures and modes of production happened. Because of their low productivity, the drylands were possibly the least altered of all American ecosystems. With the advent of technology after the Industrial Revolution, extensive changes followed across all landscapes, particularly in the drylands. Cuatro Ciénegas did not escape to the accelerated change of water diversion, land use transformation, and deep-well pumping. The last episode of the history of change of the spectacular ecosystems of the Mexican arid north is being written by land developers pushing forward the agricultural-livestock dryland frontiers at the expense of natural ecosystems. A plea for conservation closes this chapter.KeywordsArid landsCabeza de VacaClovisDesertExtinction