Doctoral Dissertation Research: Informing Environmental History with Historical Ecology: Agricultural Wetlands in New Netherland, 1620-1840

博士论文研究：用历史生态学告知环境史：新荷兰的农业湿地，1620-1840 年

• 批准号: 1031175
• 负责人: Deryck Holdsworth
• 金额: $ 0.74万
• 依托单位: Pennsylvania State Univ University Park
• 依托单位国家: 美国
• 项目类别: Standard Grant
• 财政年份: 2010
• 资助国家: 美国
• 起止时间: 2010-08-15 至 2012-07-31
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/showAward?AWD_ID=1031175&HistoricalAwards=false
• 关键词: Doctoral; Dissertation; Research; Informing; Environmental

The contiguous United States has lost more than one-half of its original wetlands after the Colonial Era. The remaining wetlands are highly valued as habitat for rare species, for water filtration, for flood control, and for other ecosystem services. Wetland function is related to biota, but unlike studies of forests and early successional habitats, the environmental legacies of past agriculture have generally not been considered in wetlands research. Wetlands often were intensively used in colonial North America?s mixed-husbandry agriculture system as sources of native hay, but they are understudied as relict agroecological systems. Furthermore, in the long-settled Northeast where demand was great for hay and where wetlands are common, most research on colonial agriculture focused only on the cultural hearths of New England and New France. New Netherland is overlooked because of the short duration of Dutch settlement and paucity of written records, and as a result, there is a geographical gap in colonial land-use history for glaciated Atlantic America and incomplete understanding of wetland vegetation change in that biophysical region. This doctoral dissertation research project will use a combination of historical and proxy records to document colonial Dutch agriculture and its impact on vegetation in wetlands of New York's Hudson River Valley and western Long Island. Images, maps, herbarium records, and colonial texts will be used to locate agricultural wetlands and explain their use, management, and agricultural abandonment following introduction of upland European forage species. This information will provide context for a case-study using paleoecological techniques to identify the impact of wetland agriculture on vegetation in a representative Dutch area. Sediment samples from a known agricultural wetland will be stratigraphically analyzed for plant macrofossils, phytoliths, charcoal, and organic material. Together with known benchmark dates, at least ten accelerator mass spectrometer (AMS) radiocarbon dates will provide a high-resolution timeline within which to analyze land-use and vegetation change during the colonial and early American eras.By utilizing newly-translated Dutch colonial records, this project will contribute to a growing understanding of the Dutch colonial experience and legacy in North America. The location of New Netherland within a physiographic and biogeographic province similar to New England and New France suggests that Dutch, English, and French activities should be considered together to create a regional-scale environmental history of landscape change. The application of traditional paleoecological techniques and incorporation of an emerging method (phytolith analysis) has potentially broader impacts for biogeographers and ecologists interested in extending the historical record for wetlands in the Northeast and elsewhere in temperate latitudes, because phytoliths may be the only available proxy record of vegetation change in hydrologically unstable environments like agricultural wetlands that are rarely described in the historical record and yield few other proxy records. As a Doctoral Dissertation Research Improvement award, this award also will provide support to enable a promising student to establish a strong independent research career.

殖民时代之后，美国本土已经失去了一半以上的原始湿地。 剩余的湿地作为稀有物种的栖息地、水过滤、防洪和其他生态系统服务具有很高的价值。 湿地功能与生物群有关，但与森林和早期演替栖息地的研究不同，湿地研究通常不考虑过去农业的环境遗产。 湿地经常在北美殖民时期的混合畜牧农业系统中被广泛用作本地干草的来源，但它们作为残余农业生态系统的研究却很少。 此外，在长期定居的东北部，那里对干草的需求很大，而且湿地很常见，大多数关于殖民农业的研究只集中在新英格兰和新法兰西的文化壁炉上。 由于荷兰人定居时间短且缺乏书面记录，新尼德兰被忽视，因此，冰川大西洋美洲的殖民土地利用历史存在地理空白，并且对该生物物理区域的湿地植被变化了解不完全。 该博士论文研究项目将结合历史和代理记录来记录荷兰殖民时期的农业及其对纽约哈德逊河谷和长岛西部湿地植被的影响。 图像、地图、植物标本室记录和殖民文本将用于定位农业湿地，并解释其使用、管理和引入欧洲高地饲料物种后的农业废弃。 该信息将为使用古生态技术的案例研究提供背景，以确定湿地农业对荷兰代表性地区植被的影响。 对来自已知农业湿地的沉积物样本进行地层分析，以了解植物大化石、植硅体、木炭和有机物质。 与已知的基准日期一起，至少十个加速器质谱仪 (AMS) 放射性碳日期将提供高分辨率的时间表，用于分析殖民时期和美国早期时期的土地利用和植被变化。通过利用新翻译的荷兰殖民记录，该项目将有助于加深对北美荷兰殖民经验和遗产的了解。 新荷兰位于类似于新英格兰和新法国的自然地理和生物地理省内，这表明荷兰、英国和法国的活动应该一起考虑，以创建区域规模的景观变化环境历史。 传统古生态技术的应用和新兴方法（植硅体分析）的结合，对于有兴趣扩展东北部和温带其他地区湿地历史记录的生物地理学家和生态学家来说，可能会产生更广泛的影响，因为植硅体可能是历史记录中很少描述的农业湿地等水文不稳定环境中植被变化的唯一可用代理记录。 并产生很少的其他代理记录。 作为博士论文研究改进奖，该奖项还将为有前途的学生建立强大的独立研究生涯提供支持。