Official websites use. Share sensitive information only on official, secure websites. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution license , which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
Communities in resource-poor areas face health, food production, sustainability, and overall survival challenges. Consequently, they are commonly featured in global debates surrounding societal collapse. Rapa Nui Easter Island is often used as an example of how overexploitation of limited resources resulted in a catastrophic population collapse. A vital component of this narrative is that the rapid rise and fall of pre-contact Rapanui population growth rates was driven by the construction and overexploitation of once extensive rock gardens.
However, the extent of island-wide rock gardening, while key for understanding food systems and demography, must be better understood. Here, we use shortwave infrared SWIR satellite imagery and machine learning to generate an island-wide estimate of rock gardening and reevaluate previous population size models for Rapa Nui.
We show that the extent of this agricultural infrastructure is substantially less than previously claimed and likely could not have supported the large population sizes that have been assumed. Satellite image analyses drastically reduce rock gardening estimates on Easter Island, indicating a small pre-European population.
It is over km from the nearest inhabited island Pitcairn and over km from the South American mainland. The physical constraints of the island limited opportunities for cultivation practices such as terraced irrigation systems found elsewhere in Polynesia. These rock gardens enhanced plant productivity by increasing available soil nutrients and maintaining soil moisture Yet, our understanding of the extent of rock gardening practices on Rapa Nui is limited, and current estimates are inaccurate see more below.
