Understanding Fire-Human Dynamics Along a Forest-Steppe Ecotone

这项研究项目提供了新的知识，并开发了新的方法来理解火灾这一长期受到气候和人类影响的全球重要过程。由于火是一种重要的自然干扰，火制度的改变可能会对脆弱的生态系统产生重大影响。研究人员将开发新的战略，从景观到区域尺度推进过去人类环境动态的研究。该项目将提供新的视角、信息、见解和方法，以促进对美国和全球最近火灾以及长期火灾趋势的基本了解。该项目还将提供有关生态系统复原力的重要见解，为世界各地脆弱生态区域的保护和资源管理提供信息。项目成果将加强公共机构更好地了解火灾的影响和制定更有效的预防和缓解程序的能力。该项目将使用新的生态系统建模方法来分析古生态和考古数据，以查明与人类有关的焚烧活动。它将审查火灾的环境后果，并评估此类火灾的生物物理反馈。调查人员将把重点放在全新世晚期，以更好地了解在南半球气候变异性很大、人口不断增长和扩大的情况下火灾的控制。他们将进行分析以回答三个主要问题：(1)由气候和植被条件驱动的过去和现在的火灾制度的性质是什么？(2)需要火灾的不同土地利用做法的生态后果是什么？(3)可能加强刻意焚烧策略的潜在植被反馈是什么？拟议的数据模型框架将有助于确定人类土地利用变化和气候缓慢变化驱动因素的重要性，并将有助于加强对中纬度气候变异性和植被反馈的了解。这种跨学科的方法将改善目前定性的古生态和考古重建，并将补充从美国和国际上正在进行的生态学研究中获得的见解。

This research project contributes new knowledge and develops new approaches for understanding fire as a globally significant process, which has long been influenced by climate and humans. Because fire is an important natural disturbance, alterations of fire regimes can have significant impacts on vulnerable ecosystems. The investigators will develop new strategies to advance research about past human-environment dynamics from landscape to regional scales. The project will provide new perspectives, information, insights, and approaches to advance basic understanding of recent fires as well as long-term fire trends in the U.S. and globally. The project also will provide important insights about ecosystem resilience that can inform conservation and resource management of fragile ecoregions in various parts of the world. Project results will enhance the capacity of public agencies to better understand impacts of fire and to develop more effective preventive and mitigation procedures.The project will use new ecosystems modeling approaches to analyze paleoecological and archeological data in order to identify human-related burning activities. It will examine the environmental consequences of fire and assess the biophysical feedbacks of such fires. The investigators will focus on the late Holocene period to gain a better understanding of the controls of fire at a time when climate variability was high and human populations were growing and expanding in the southern hemisphere. They will conduct analyses to answer three main questions: (1) What is the nature of past and present fire regimes driven by climate and vegetation conditions? (2) What are the ecological consequences of different land-use practices that require fire? (3) What are the potential vegetation feedbacks that may have reinforced deliberate burning strategies? The proposed data-model framework will help to identify the importance of changes in human land use and slowly varying drivers in climate, and they will help enhance understanding of climate variability and vegetation feedbacks in the mid-latitudes. The interdisciplinary approach will improve current qualitative paleoecological and archeological reconstructions, and it will complement insights gained from ecological research underway in the U.S. and internationally.