Experts have discovered that deforestation is the reason for the decline of the Mayan civilization.
Speaking of ancient civilizations, many refer to Egypt. But it would be a huge shortcoming if not to mention the Mayan civilization - the most ancient civilization developed with countless achievements, legacy ... ancient.
Yet the Mayan civilization peaked and disappeared, leaving no explanation. This has caused a lot of headaches for the scientific community.
Many studies have been conducted to decipher this mystery. And recent research by Canadian scientists McGill has shown that the ancient Mayan civilization was destroyed by deforestation.
Accordingly, climate change, indiscriminate deforestation in the rainforests of southern Mexico, Belize, Guatemala is the cause of the collapse of the Mayan civilization.
This conclusion was made after researchers analyzed sediment, soil in lakes, lands around that area.
By analyzing carbon stocks in the soil, experts have found that plants use sunlight to absorb CO2 from the atmosphere through photosynthesis and store it. Logging in the forest affects the ability of the land to store carbon.
In addition, researchers have evaluated the change in carbon time that exists in the Maya lowland in the last 3,500 years.
They found that the Maya's indiscriminate deforestation to build the city made the land a serious erosion. The reservoirs also become dry, the food depots exhausted, so causing difficulty to continue a civilization, which is accustomed to humid climate.
The erosion in this area is not showing signs of full recovery, despite the fact that it took place thousands of years ago.
This is a much clearer statement about the protection of the rainforest that is so important that once it has been destroyed, erosion will take a very long time - sometimes thousands of years to recover.
Professor Peter Douglas of McGill University in Canada said: "Now you come to this area will see just like a dense tropical jungle.
But if you analyze the carbon stocks in the soil, you will basically find that ecosystems seem to have changed and can never return to their original state. "
"The discovery of this secret is a wake-up call for us to protect the rest of the tropical rainforest in the world," said Professor Douglas.
This storage of carbon will greatly benefit the environment. And how great would it be if we could build models that could control how deforestation affects the global carbon pools? "
The study is published in the journal Nature Geoscience.
Source: Express