A 2,000-year reconstruction of the rain-fed maize agricultural niche in the US Southwest
A 2,000-year reconstruction of the rain-fed maize agricultural niche in the US Southwest
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DOI：
10.1038/ncomms6618
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发表时间：
2014-12-01
影响因子：
16.6
通讯作者：
Kohler, Timothy A.
中科院分区：
文献类型：
--
作者：
Bocinsky, R. Kyle;Kohler, Timothy A.
人类在局部范围内体验、适应和影响气候。然而，古气候研究往往集中在大陆、半球或全球范围内，这使得考古学家和古生态学家很难研究局部影响。在这里，我们介绍一种根据树木年轮进行高频局部气候场重建的方法。我们重建了美国西南部两个前西班牙裔农民人口密集的地区的雨养玉米农业生态位。生态位规模和稳定性在区域内部和区域之间差异很大。前西班牙时代靠雨水浇灌玉米的农民往往生活在最可靠的生态位农业庇护区。著名的十三世纪普韦布洛移民的时间和轨迹可以从相对生态位规模和稳定性来理解。像这样的局部重建阐明了过去人类通过将气候重新调整为他们所依赖的资源分布来适应气候变化的策略的范围。
Humans experience, adapt to and influence climate at local scales. Paleoclimate research, however, tends to focus on continental, hemispheric or global scales, making it difficult for archaeologists and paleoecologists to study local effects. Here we introduce a method for high-frequency, local climate-field reconstruction from tree-rings. We reconstruct the rain-fed maize agricultural niche in two regions of the southwestern United States with dense populations of prehispanic farmers. Niche size and stability are highly variable within and between the regions. Prehispanic rain-fed maize farmers tended to live in agricultural refugia-areas most reliably in the niche. The timing and trajectory of the famous thirteenth century Pueblo migration can be understood in terms of relative niche size and stability. Local reconstructions like these illuminate the spectrum of strategies past humans used to adapt to climate change by recasting climate into the distributions of resources on which they depended.