Collaborative Research: Megafauna Extinction, Ecosystem Disruption, and Climate Change in Australia: Assessing the Human Factor

合作研究：澳大利亚巨型动物灭绝、生态系统破坏和气候变化：评估人为因素

• 批准号: 0081876
• 负责人: Marilyn Fogel
• 金额: $ 12.38万
• 依托单位: Carnegie Institution of Washington
• 依托单位国家: 美国
• 项目类别: Continuing Grant
• 财政年份: 2000
• 资助国家: 美国
• 起止时间: 2000-09-15 至 2004-08-31
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/showAward?AWD_ID=0081876&HistoricalAwards=false
• 关键词: Collaborative; Research; Megafauna; Extinction; Ecosystem

This award is for support of a collaborative project (between University of Colorado, Bates College, and the Carnegie Institute of Washington) to study the impact of Pleistocene colonization of Australia by modern humans. The investigators hypothesize that human burning activities destabilized ecosystems across the interior such that a large segment of the dependent fauna became extinct, and that this ecosystem change ultimately led to reduced effective moisture over the interior. The study involves a tightly focussed field campaign to acquire primary collections, and a coordinated analytical program for these samples concentrating on their physical characteristics, geochronology, and carbon isotopes as a paleovegetation proxy. By evaluating whether unparalleled shifts in the diet of Genyornis occurred as extinction approached the investigators can test whether human predation (no expected dietary change) or ecosystem collapse (expected adjustment of diet to meet these changes) is the more probable extinction mechanism.

该奖项是对一个合作项目(科罗拉多大学、贝茨学院和华盛顿卡内基研究所)的支持，该项目旨在研究现代人类对澳大利亚更新世殖民的影响。研究人员假设，人类燃烧活动破坏了整个内陆生态系统的稳定，导致大部分依赖的动物灭绝，这种生态系统的变化最终导致内陆有效水分的减少。这项研究包括为获取初级标本而进行的密切关注的野外活动，以及对这些样品的协调分析计划，重点放在它们的物理特征、地质年代学和碳同位素作为古植被代理。通过评估在接近灭绝时，天才鸟的饮食是否发生了前所未有的变化，研究人员可以测试人类的捕食(没有预期的饮食变化)或生态系统崩溃(预期调整饮食以适应这些变化)是更有可能的灭绝机制。