GGG Ping.
NAFTA was seen written on the ruins
Asking the locals would have been easier, quicker, and less expensive but then they wouldn't be able to claim they "discovered" something that was never lost.
“but the deforestation raised temperatures and reduced rainfall, drying up water sources, Sever said. “
I’ll call B.S. on that line. Local deforestation, no matter how severe is not going to change the pattern of rainfal in Central America. Droughts are caused by changes in the water vapor weather patterns of the globe which are causedby... THE SUN, not Kinich and his stone axe.
Duh - wouldn't this be more significant than CO2?
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Cartography, GIS, GPS, and various remote sensing (overhead imagery) techniques are some of my primary research tools in archaeology.
We are, at present, trying to arrange a LIDAR overflight over a heavily forested area where we know a complex of 30 large Caddo dwelling mounds surrounding one "big (temple?) mound" are located.
LIDAR is claimed to produce elevation images with as good as 2" (two inch!) vertical resolution. It produces an "elevation point cloud" -- with points returned off of the tops of the trees, and a lower set where the laser light penetrates through the vegetation to the ground surface. By subtracting out the canopy-top point set, an amazingly detailed elevation dataset can be produced.
Then, by applying pseudo-shadowing convolutions (spatial filters), a strikingly realistic and detailed "3-D" ground surface image can be generated.
We are already applying LIDAR to the mapping of long-unused historic roads, trails, and "traces" -- including the famous 1813 "Trammel's Trace" on which I am doing research...