Question

New Mexico History! Explain why the New Mexican government needs to control the use of water in the twenty-first century?

Answer 1

Answer:New Mexico lies at the intersection of four geologic provinces: the Colorado Plateau, the Rocky Mountains, the Great Plains, and the Basin and Range Province. These regions have their own boundaries, and they exert great influence over how the inhabitants of New Mexico have lived. About one million years ago the area attained the character it retains today. Glaciers that had carved valleys and lakes that had flooded basin floors, disappeared, leaving behind alluvial fans, layers of silt, and rock terraces. Once wet and verdant, New Mexico had become a desert. This was what the first human beings who came there found, around 10,000 B.C.

From the perspective of stable human communities, New Mexico is a very dry land. In this region, water is a scarce and precious resource; this was the case with the ancestral peoples who inhabited the area, and it is still the case in the twenty-first century. Water is, perhaps, the single most important factor in the development of any human settlement, and in New Mexico there are only six moderately dependable rivers. Human beings can only survive about ten days without water; without some reliable access to water, none of the other factors on which life depends can be made use of.

For this reason, water in New Mexico has formed the underlying basis of all human activity, and its abundance or scarcity is of the utmost importance for all that happens in the state. Consequently, from prehistoric times forward, water in New Mexico has been subject to an unbroken lineage of formal organizational control.

Explanation: H I ;0