Conserving Wetlands and Traditional Agriculture in Mexico

This expedition opened my eyes to water conservation problems that have features that are unique to Mexico City, but also have much in common with large urban centers anywhere in the world. The challenge is to preserve a core wetland that is a key element in maintaining Mexico City’s water system. The research is remarkably comprehensive, ranging from the hard science of conserving water quality and soil biology to the harder practicality of adapting ancient agricultural traditions to a modern urban marketplace. In the course of a week, our team was given a hands-on introduction to a full suite of innovative strategies, from training farmers to do their own soil quality assessments to establishing niche marketing networks involving high-end restaurants. This was my fourth Earthwatch expedition, and I can confidently say that it was the one that has taught me the most. In addition, this expedition gave me the greatest sense of an immediate, direct, and practical benefit to the local people and to the local environment.

This experience changed my life and the direction of my program. Upon returning home I began to rewrite my curriculum based on what I learned. My videos, which were posted back home, inspired several other teachers at my school and really helped bring many curriculums together with a focus on environmental conservation, sustainability, best management practices for wetland areas and stormwater management and cultural awareness. Additionally, the students and staff were encouraged to see that the efforts we are making to save our wetlands and manage our stormwater. So many of the invasive plants we studied are also a problem in our area and its great to see our collective solutions adding up to change. Additionally, many of the birds that migrate from our area go to the same areas in Mexico I toured. My students were amazed to see what we learn about integrated pest management and other sustainable farming methods not only being practiced in Xochimilco, but possibly invented there 1000's of years ago. We are busy making chinampas and building even more pollinator and bird habitats. This made our world smaller and ideas bigger.

I have spent most of my life in the same small pocket of the world. My family is from this area and continues to put down roots in the same way. Of course, I read over the field briefing and researched Mexico City, Xochimilco, the chinampas and the star of the show the amazing axolotl, but I left all preconceived notions behind and allowed myself to just take in the experience as I went. The more I learned about the history of the chinampas, about their role in the great Aztec empire, about their connection to the world around them, the more I began to understand that the people who created them were themselves connected to their world. They recognized the innate value of the sludge at the bottom of the lake and built islands from it to grow food for a nation. The long strips of land between channels of spring-fed canals gave an effortless source of irrigation. They planted trees along the banks whose roots held the rich soil in place, weaving together like baskets, which is the origin of the word chinampa. They built a system of dikes to separate the freshwater in the south from the more brackish water downstream because the freshwater made the crops grow better. They accomplished so much simply by observing the natural way of their surroundings and working with them. They were scientists ahead of their time. I feel that humanity today with all of our technological advancements, our institutes of higher learning and our complex systems of government, we could stand to learn something from the ancient wisdom that created the chinampas. So now I've returned to the city where I've spent most of my life. Like Mexico City, we have the same problems of urban sprawl, sewage treatment failures, agricultural runoff, polluted waterways that were once crystal clear, declining habitats and subsequent decline of species. How we address these issues in our lifetime will affect those downstream, both literally in the sense of water flowing and figuratively in the sense of the flow of time. It all keeps flowing endlessly. We can choose how we send it on its way. I choose to leave it better than I found it.