Establishing Regional Templates for Historic Reference Conditions for Lowland Riverine Landscapes: Seeing Through Human-Related Homogenization in the Puget Lowland

大型洪泛平原河流的地貌是最复杂和生物生产力最高的河流之一，其生态系统也是最受威胁的河流之一。 这些洪泛区是重要的自然资源，因此是人类最密集使用和最广泛改变的景观之一。 更好地了解这些环境将有助于恢复这些洪泛区和有效地管理土地和河流的使用，但对温带地区的河流了解甚少，主要是因为历史上与人类有关的变化的简化，简化和模糊的影响。 本研究计画将探讨华盛顿州普吉特低地地区的河川景观，并将其视为自然、生态与人文系统的耦合。 调查员将通过调查地貌模板地质演变的空间（100公里至不到1米）和时间（10 000年至不到1年）控制以及模板如何构建河流生态系统，开发多尺度、空间明确的景观演变和过程模型。 他还将研究和开发方法，以重建生物物理景观条件之前，人类相关的变化时期。 该项目将采用多种交叉引用方法，包括档案、实地和地形（高分辨率数字高程模型）代理和现有的自然代理研究。 这些方法将被纳入三个研究组成部分：了解全新世景观演变;河流过程和动力学研究;以及定居前景观的地理信息系统绘图。 研究人员将讨论处理几个问题的假设，包括更新世冰川作用的遗产对同一地文省的现代河流剖面施加了对比的不平衡条件;迫使对比现代河流形态和动力学的不平衡条件;其他物理过程，如全新世火山泥流和全新世同震升降，在特征的时间和空间尺度上的操作修改了这个模板，但并没有从根本上改变它;以及物理景观演变如何导致在河谷尺度上定义的景观过程域，并在地文省内可预测地形成图案。 他还将讨论地球物理模板强烈影响生态系统组装的假设。 特别是，他将研究在某些领域的大型河岸树木的存在是否催化多个生态系统的反馈机制，定义一个生态系统的轨迹走向自我增强的状态，从而组织和维护河流的过程和地貌以及森林河谷生态系统的结构和功能。 该项目将在线提供地理信息系统产品和支持性地理空间数据，创建一个因特网地图服务器（IMS）和一个区域河流景观及其随时间变化的在线地图集，该项目将调查低地河流景观的演变、历史和功能。 它将为基础景观科学提供关于低地河流景观的物理演变、构成这些景观的时空尺度和关键过程以及物理过程和生态系统之间的动态的见解。 它将提供各种方法，以便在多个尺度上了解河流景观，并重建其定居前的生物物理条件。 这些见解和方法在管理、恢复以及土地和河流利用规划方面有着广泛的应用。 该项目还将为研究人员、机构、非政府组织和公民团体创建在线资源，并为其他地区的在线资源模式做出贡献。

The landscapes of large floodplain rivers are among the most complex and biologically productive, and their ecosystems are among the most critically threatened. These floodplains are important natural resources and therefore are among the landscapes most intensively used and extensively modified by humans. Efforts to restore these floodplains and manage land and river uses effectively will benefit from better understanding these environments, but such rivers in the temperate-zone are poorly understood, largely because of the simplifying, homogenizing, and obscuring effects of historical human-related change. This research project will investigate river landscapes in the Puget Lowland region of the state of Washington as coupled physical, ecological, and human systems. The investigator will develop multi-scale, spatially explicit landscape evolution and process models by investigating the spatial (100 km to less than 1 m) and temporal (10,000 years to less than one year) controls on geological evolution of the geomorphic template as well as how the template structures riverine ecosystems. He also will investigate and develop methods to reconstruct biophysical landscape conditions prior to periods of human-related change. The project will employ multiple, cross-referencing approaches, including archival, field, and topographic (high-resolution digital elevation model) proxies and existing natural proxy studies. These approaches will be integrated into three study components: understanding Holocene landscape evolution; riverine process and dynamics studies; and GIS mapping of the pre-settlement landscape. The researcher will address hypotheses that deal with several issues, including the legacy of Pleistocene glaciation imposes contrasting disequilibrium conditions onto modern river profiles in the same physiographic province; the disequilibrium conditions that force contrasting modern river morphologies and dynamics; how other physical processes, such as Holocene lahars and Holocene co-seismic uplift and subsidence, operating at characteristic temporal and spatial scales modify this template but do not fundamentally change it; and how physical landscape evolution results in landscape process domains defined at a river valley scale and are predictably patterned within the physiographic province. He also will address the hypothesis that the geophysical template strongly influences ecosystem assembly. In particular, he will examine whether the presence of large riparian trees in certain domains catalyzes multiple biogeomorphic feedback mechanisms that define an ecosystem trajectory toward a self-reinforcing state, thereby organizing and maintaining fluvial processes and landforms and the structure and function of forested river valley ecosystems. The project will provide GIS products and supporting geospatial data online, create an Internet Map Server (IMS), and an online atlas of the regional riverine landscape and its change through time.This project will investigate the evolution, history, and function of lowland river landscapes. It will provide insights to basic landscape sciences on the physical evolution of lowland riverine landscape, the time and space scales and critical processes that structure these landscapes, and the dynamics between physical processes and ecosystems. It will provide methodologies for understanding riverine landscapes at multiple scales and for reconstructing their pre-settlement biophysical condition. These insights and methodologies have broad application in management, restoration, and land and river use planning. The project also will create online resources for researchers, agencies, NGOs, and citizen groups and contribute toward a model for such an online resource for other regions.