AURA

Here’s what I read about their irrigation system:

Scott A. Elias, The Ice-Age History of Southwestern National Parks (Washington: Smithsonian Institution Press, 1997), p. 161:

"Probably more than half of the water used by the Anasazi at Chaco Canyon was runoff from upland streams. Water was diverted to Chaco from increasing distances, but eventually the irrigation system failed, and so then did local agriculture.…

Paleontologist Steve Hall reasoned that increased erosion of channels used to carry water to the fields may have been the last straw in the collapse of agriculture at Chaco. In a twist on the drought hypothesis, Hall proposed that the cause of the erosion may have been increased runoff caused by long-term climate change favoring greater precipitation. A channel, called the Post-Bonito Channel, was eroded down to a level 3.2m below the Chaco valley floor at A.D. 1100, placing the runoff from upland streams out of the reach of any existing water control system.

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