Water Always Wins

SFEI often starts with nineteenth-century US Geographic Survey topographic maps and hydrologic surveys, coastal navigation maps, historical and modern aerial photographs, and century-old maps from the US Department of Agriculture demarcating thirty different types of soil. (The latter is a good indicator of water capacity and vegetation and habitat type.) Then the historical ecologists add their archival finds, weighted to reflect their confidence in each bit. Their approach has been taken up and adapted by others in this small field in different regions. Fortified with these detailed maps of what once was, detectives can understand what water wants in a particular place and look for opportunities to accommodate it.