Burning Effects On Savannah Environments

犹他大学的克里斯汀·霍克斯博士将开展研究，调查生活在坦桑尼亚北部的哈扎族觅食者如何利用被烧毁的景观来开发野生动植物。火的使用越来越被认为是狩猎和采集的一个重要组成部分，它影响着觅食的返回率，并塑造了世界各地的当地环境，但火在哈扎人和其他非洲觅食者生存活动中的作用一直没有得到充分的研究。博士后助理Christopher Parker博士将带来他的经验，衡量在澳大利亚西部沙漠使用狩猎-采集火的直接好处和生态后果，以明确在这一非洲背景下火的影响的独特特征。该项目将扩大他的比较专业知识；参与该项目的研究生将学习和实践系统行为观察和定量火灾生态学的技术，这些技术将为他们未来的职业生涯服务。记录有关火灾使用的信息将有助于保存传统的Hadza知识，这些知识受到全球化日益增长的影响的威胁，并将表征人与环境的相互作用，有助于负责在类似生态环境中管理火灾影响的政策制定者。记录哈扎人在其东非家园使用火的专业知识，将为估计和校准火的性质和大小对过去更深层次的非洲稀树草原觅食回报的影响奠定基础。列举这些影响将使我们能够估计导致我们血统中早期成员受控使用火的选择性优势，并有助于确定人类对火和烹饪的独特依赖的演变途径。这项研究将在对当地生态有深入了解的人的指导下，通过量化烧伤的好处来填补知识空白。这项研究将确定在这一赤道稀树草原上，哪些觅食方面受到烧伤的影响最大和最小，哪些资源类型在被火改变时盈利能力变化最显著。这些结果将是描述火灾引起的生态变化对古老的撒哈拉以南非洲觅食机会的可能作用的基础，并改进关于这些变化对我们属出现的影响的假设。

Dr. Kristen Hawkes of the University of Utah will undertake research to investigate the ways Hadza foragers living in northern Tanzania take advantage of burned landscapes in their exploitation of wild plants and animals. Fire use is increasingly recognized as an important component of hunting and gathering that affects foraging return rates and has shaped local environments world-wide, but the role of fire in subsistence activities by the Hadza and other African foragers has been understudied. Postdoctoral associate Dr. Christopher Parker will bring his experience measuring the immediate benefits and ecological consequences of hunter-gatherer fire use in the Western Desert of Australia to specify distinctive features of fire's effects in this African context. The project will expand his comparative expertise; and participating graduate students will learn and practice techniques of systematic behavioral observations and quantitative fire ecology that will serve their future careers. Recording information on fire use will contribute to the preservation of traditional Hadza knowledge, which is threatened by the increasing effects of globalization and will characterize human-environment interactions that can aid policy makers charged with managing fire's impact in similar ecological settings. Documentation of Hadza expertise on fire use in their East African homeland will build the foundation for estimating and calibrating the nature and magnitude of fire's effect on foraging returns in African savannas in the deeper past. Enumerating these effects will allow estimates of the selective advantages that led earlier members of our lineage to controlled fire use and will help identify the pathways by which the distinctively human dependence on fire and cooking evolved. This research will fill a gap in knowledge by quantifying the benefits of burns with the guidance of people who are intimately knowledgeable about local ecology. The research will identify which aspects of foraging are most and least affected by burns in this equatorial savanna and which resource types see the most significant changes in profitability when altered by fire. Results will be the basis for characterizing the likely role of fire-induced ecological alteration on foraging opportunities in ancient sub-Saharan Africa and improve hypotheses about the effects of those alterations on the emergence of our genus.