Doctoral Dissertation Research: Did Native Americans Fundamentally Alter Western Forest Structure? A Reconstruction of Vegetation and Fire History from Northwestern California

博士论文研究：美洲原住民从根本上改变了西部森林结构吗？

• 批准号: 0926732
• 负责人: Scott Mensing
• 金额: $ 1.2万
• 依托单位: Board of Regents, NSHE, obo University of Nevada, Reno
• 依托单位国家: 美国
• 项目类别: Standard Grant
• 财政年份: 2009
• 资助国家: 美国
• 起止时间: 2009-09-01 至 2011-08-31
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/showAward?AWD_ID=0926732&HistoricalAwards=false
• 关键词: Doctoral; Dissertation; Research; Did; Native

Broad disagreement exists regarding the scale and degree of historic Native American disturbance in the western forests of the United States. There is a continuum from those who argue for minimal impacts restricted to the immediate vicinity of permanent villages and camps, to those who argue that Native American influences, through the use of fire, were widespread and that modern management practices need to acknowledge this influence when formulating land use policies. This debate is a central issue in distinguishing the role humans may have had in influencing forest structure in the western United States. Differing interpretations from scientists in different disciplines have led to a lack of multidisciplinary studies directed at answering this important issue. Doctoral student Jeffery Crawford, under the supervision of Dr. Scott Mensing at the University of Nevada, Reno will use methods from both paleoecology and anthropology to examine the record of fire and vegetation change at two low-elevation lake sites in northwestern California that have a history of Native American land-use. These lakes were selected because they are near well-documented sites of long-term Native American habitation and should provide clear evidence if local populations were manipulating large areas of forest. This analysis will utilize multiple methods, including pollen and charcoal analysis, tree-ring analysis, ethnographic studies, and archaeological studies. Lake sediments collected from each site will be analyzed for pollen and charcoal in order to provide a high-resolution record of the fire and vegetation dynamics of each lake basin. A fire history of each basin will be constructed using fire scar analysis of tree-rings. The fire-scar results will be compared with charcoal results from lake sediments to calibrate charcoal abundance to a known fire record in order to reconstruct a long term fire history. Any anomalous vegetation or fire patterns will then be compared to the regional climatological, anthropological and archaeological records in order to determine how Native American migration patterns or technological changes may have influenced landscape fire and vegetation patterns.The results of this study will begin to fill the knowledge gap regarding the intensity and scale of Native American land-use in western forests. The results will be directly applicable to Northwestern California forests, but will be broadly applicable to forests throughout the west by explicitly measuring the impacts of Native Americans on western forests and the extent to which they may have impacted landscapes beyond the local scale. These results can play a transformative role in conceptualizing a wider range of conditions that influenced forests prior to Euro-American settlement and help to guide future forest management decisions.

关于美国西部森林历史上美洲原住民干扰的规模和程度存在广泛的分歧。有一个连续体，从那些认为影响最小的人限制在永久性村庄和营地附近，到那些认为美洲原住民的影响，通过使用火，是广泛的，现代管理实践需要承认这种影响时，制定土地使用政策。这场辩论是一个中心问题，在区分人类可能已经在影响美国西部的森林结构的作用。 不同学科科学家的不同解释导致缺乏针对回答这一重要问题的多学科研究。博士生杰弗里·克劳福德在内华达州大学里诺分校的斯科特·门辛博士的监督下，将使用古生态学和人类学的方法来研究加州西北部两个低海拔湖泊遗址的火灾和植被变化记录，这些湖泊有美洲原住民土地使用的历史。之所以选择这些湖泊，是因为它们靠近记录良好的美洲原住民长期居住地，如果当地人口正在操纵大片森林，应该提供明确的证据。 这项分析将采用多种方法，包括花粉和木炭分析、树木年轮分析、人种学研究和考古学研究。将对从每个地点收集的湖泊沉积物进行花粉和木炭分析，以提供每个湖盆火灾和植被动态的高分辨率记录。每个盆地的火灾历史将使用树木年轮的火痕分析来构建。 将火痕结果与湖泊沉积物的木炭结果进行比较，以根据已知的火灾记录校准木炭丰度，从而重建长期火灾历史。 任何异常的植被或火灾模式，然后将比较区域的气候，人类学和考古记录，以确定美洲原住民的迁移模式或技术的变化可能会影响景观火灾和植被patterns.The结果的这项研究将开始，以填补知识空白的强度和规模的美洲原住民的土地利用在西部森林。结果将直接适用于西北部的加州森林，但将广泛适用于整个西部的森林，明确衡量美洲原住民对西部森林的影响，以及他们可能对当地范围以外的景观产生影响的程度。 这些结果可以在概念化影响欧美定居前森林的更广泛条件方面发挥变革性作用，并有助于指导未来的森林管理决策。