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© Copyright 2003 by Tony Burton. All rights reserved.Can Mexico's Largest Lake be Saved?
Part 5: A Year 2003 Update
The Future of Lake Chapala
A Review of
"The Lerma-Lake Chapala Watershed: Evaluation and Management"
Edited by Anne M. Hansen and Manfred van Afferden
(New York: Kluwer Academic / Plenum Publishers, 2001)
By Tony Burton
Part 1: November 1997 - An international rehabilitation effort gets under way...
Part 2: March, 2000 - A Year 2000 Update: The State of The Lake.
Part 3: March, 2001 - A Year 2001 Update: The Future of Lake Chapala - Suggestions For Discussion
Part 4: May 2002 - Lake Chapala - Fish Farm, Farmland or Bungee Jump?
This seminal work is the first major book-length scientific publication in English about the lake.
As James Leckie writes in the foreword, "Although many public and private institutions, universities and research centers have conducted studies on the Lerma-Chapala Basin over the last two decades, the need for a comprehensive summary of the findings of those studies has become increasingly obvious and important for this critical water resource." This collection of articles includes contributions from researchers in such universities and research centers as the University of Guadalajara, Mexican Institute of Water Technology, Autonomous University of Guadalajara, Baylor University, the Harvard School of Public Health and Environment Canada.
Comprehensive bibliographic references at the end of each chapter show just how many scientific papers have been published about the lake (in Spanish and in English) in academic journals. An index at the end of the book makes it relatively easy to cross-reference important topics from one author to another.
Section I, "Natural Resources and Management in the Basin" (pages 1 - 92), contains three chapters. The first is a straightforward overview of the basic hydrology of the basin. The second chapter deals with geology, sediments and soils in a systematic manner. This chapter introduces the idea of the changing morphology of the lake over the past 200 years as a result of natural climatic variability and of human activity. It would have been nice to see an extended discussion of the "geological hazards" in the region, rather than this simple listing (with references to articles elsewhere) of fissures, mass movements, debris- and mud-slides preceded by waterspouts, floodings, droughts, differential movement of clay soils, volcanic eruptions and earthquakes. Sedimentation rates are examined in some detail and found to vary from about 5 mm/year in the eastern part of the lake to less than 2 mm/year in the western part. The final chapter in Section I covers some aspects of natural resources management in the basin, with an interesting discussion of the relative costs and efficiency of different techniques of irrigation, a key consideration in the basin.
Click here for access to complete Article |
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