Environmental Engineering Reference
In-Depth Information
FIGURE 11.10
Visitor accommodation and observation tower.
All in all, this nature center in Mexico is the equal to many such wetland interpreta-
tion centers within the United States (Kusler 1998) or indeed anywhere else in the
world (France 2003).
XOCHIMILCO
h istory and d esCriPtion
In their own right, the ecological rehabilitation and economic revitalization of the
Xochimilco wetlands and residents at the edge of Mexico City represent one of the
most interesting landscape restoration projects anywhere in the world. And further-
more, in the present context, Xochimilco offers many parallels to the Iraqi marsh-
lands and thus may be able to offer insight to that situation.
Lake Texcoco was a large, shallow body of water in the Central Valley of Mexico
that once covered an area of more than 1,000 km 2 . The lake and wetlands supported
a regional population of about two hundred thousand, including what was probably
the largest city in the world at its time and what would later give rise to Mexico
City. Up to 2 million people lived in the entire Central Valley during the time of
Teotihuacán (700 ce), the Toltecs (1000 ce), and the Aztecs (1500 ce). Teotihuacán is
the largest archeological site in the New World with its own Mesopotamian ziggurat
equivalents in the form of the famous Mesoamerican pyramids of the Sun and Moon,
the largest such structures in the world.
“Xochimilco” means the place where flowers bloom in the native Nahuatl lan-
guage. The first Spanish accounts rhapsodize about the location being “a magical
landscape that resembles the stuff of dreams” wherein the city seemed to float on
islands of flowers and vegetables, with intoxicating scents, canoes gliding by on
extensive networks of canals through the marshes, flights of singing birds, and the
like (Schjetnan 1995, 1996).
Early dikes were built soon after the conquest in order to protect Xochimilco
from salt intrusions originating from the brackish lakes to the north caused by
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