Landscape Modifications Ascribed to El Niño Events in Late Pre-Hispanic Coastal Peru

Abstract

Coastal Peru, one of the driest deserts in the world, is a key region to investigate the connection between climate processes and Earth surface responses. However, the trends in space and time of the landscape effects of El Niño events throughout the last millennium are hard to outline. A deeper understanding of geological and archaeological data in pre-Hispanic time can help to shed light on some critical questions regarding the relationship between such a coupled atmosphere–ocean phenomenon and landscape modifications. The bibliographic sources required for this purpose are scattered throughout various disciplines, ranging from physical to human sciences, and thus comprehensive databases were used to identify and screen relevant studies. The performed examination of these documents allowed us to assess strengths and weaknesses of literature hypotheses and motivate additional studies on targeted research objectives.