Nicholas P. Dunning is Professor of Geography at the University of Cincinnati. He is a geoarchaeologist and cultural ecologist specializing in the neotropics. He has published several books and more than ninety articles and book chapters, including those in this volume.

Vernon L. Scarborough is Distinguished University Research Professor and Charles Phelps Taft Professor in the Department of Anthropology at the University of Cincinnati. His work emphasizes sustainability and global water systems through an examination of past engineered landscapes, using comparative ecological and transdisciplinary perspectives. In addition to editing Water and Humanity: A Historical Overview for UNESCO, he is a steering committee member of the Integrated History and Future of People on Earth (IHOPE) network, whose main office is located at Uppsala University, and an active organizer of the subgroup IHOPE-Maya. He is a senior editor for the journal WIREs Water and a series editor for Cambridge University Press's New Directions in Sustainability and Society series. He has published ten books - eight of them edited, including this volume - and authored more than ninety book chapters or journal articles.