HSD: Paleoclimatic Change, Landscape Evolution, and Cultural Transformations in Far Western Tibet from 2,500 Years Before the Present to the Present

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The more than four billion people who live today in the Himalayan and trans-Himalayan nations depend upon the Asian summer monsoon for their livelihood. Disruptions in the timing, amount, and location of monsoon rainfall can seriously affect the livelihood of these people and create widespread economic, social, and health-related problems. Unfortunately, basic understanding of the linkages between monsoon variability and human institutional response is less comprehensive than is desirable primarily because of a paucity of long-term instrumental records of monsoon variability and historical documents that describe how the peoples of the region have coped with this variability. One approach that offers the potential to develop significant insights into this problem is historical ecology, a research orientation that seeks to obtain simultaneously data on climate change and human response to it over long time frames. In this research project, a multidisciplinary team of researchers from the paleoenvironmental science, geomorphology, archaeology, and archival studies will the study the causes and consequences of a hypothesized abrupt shift in the intensity of the Asian monsoon around AD 1300. This project will focus on far western Tibet, a region where this shift is believed to have led to significant changes in the subsistence economies of the peoples of the region, including famine, migrations, and major changes in political economy. This project will undertake a thorough examination of the causal forces behind monsoon variability as well as a comprehensive documentation of the variety of responses made by human institutions (ranging in scale from the household to the regional polity) to variation in monsoon intensity and character at different temporal scales. The project will enhance basic understanding of both natural climate variability and the impact of this variability on human institutions. Although focusing on Tibet, this project will provide new insights into long-term interaction between climate systems and people throughout the Himalayan region. The project will promote teaching, training and learning by building new partnerships among universities, disciplines, and researchers in the United States, China and Tibet. It will integrate both research and education through the involvement of undergraduate and graduate students. Each project team leader will encourage participating students to work directly with every aspect of the project, including field research, thus enabling them to obtain a richer experience than would be possible by working only within a single discipline. An award resulting from the FY 2005 NSF-wide competition on Human and Social Dynamics (HSD) supports this project. All NSF directorates and offices are involved in the coordinated management of the HSD competition and the portfolio of HSD awards.