RUI: Documenting Ojibwe Land Use Through Tree-Ring Analysis of Culturally Modified Trees in the Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness

国家科学基础地理空间科学(GSS)进展这项研究项目将提供关于欧洲前定居点土地使用的生态影响的新知识，以及这些遗产对保护区管理的关键重要性。研究人员将促进对人与自然环境之间复杂相互作用的理解，以了解过去和未来在多个尺度上的生物地理模式。项目成果将有助于确定低强度土地利用的生态遗产，并有助于确定生态恢复的参考条件和基线数据。该项目将为就读于以本科为主的院校的本科生提供宝贵的教育和培训机会，并将促进早期职业科学教育工作者的专业发展。调查人员将积极与美洲原住民部落资源经理合作，并将开展外联活动，与土地资源管理社区和公众分享成果。了解过去数千年来人类对火灾制度的影响程度，对于理解和管理美国和世界各地适应火灾的植被群落具有重要意义。剥树皮的松树可以提供令人信服的土地利用背景，以解释广泛和不断增长的火灾历史和森林年龄结构。调查人员将使用树状年代学方法对边界水域独木舟地区荒野中树木上的果皮伤痕进行测年，以提供五大湖地区奥吉布土地使用的第一个绝对年代和空间精确的记录。将进行参数和非参数检验，以比较火灾频率、火灾同步性和火灾高发区的空间关联与剥离伤疤的发生，以确定人类和火灾活动之间的关联。与考古学家的合作将为树木年轮数据提供文化背景，并将使人们能够直接检查人们对这一荒野地区的火灾制度和植被群落的影响。这项工作的结果将对人们在欧洲以前的地貌中的作用有一个新的认识，这将有助于指导今后在大湖区和整个世界温带森林地区的研究和管理。

NATIONAL SCIENCE FOUNDATIONGEOGRAPHY SPATIAL SCIENCES (GSS) PROGRAMABSTRACTThis research project will provide new knowledge regarding the ecological impacts of pre-European settlement land use and the critical importance of these legacies for the management of protected areas. The investigators will advance understanding about the complex interplay between people and the natural environment for understanding past and future biogeographical patterns across multiple scales. Project outcomes will be valuable in identifying the ecological legacies of low-intensity land use and for identifying reference conditions and baseline data for ecological restoration. The project will provide valuable education and training opportunities for undergraduate students enrolled at a primarily undergraduate institution and will foster professional development of early career science educators. The investigators will actively collaborate with Native American tribal resource managers and will conduct outreach activities for sharing outcomes with land-resource management communities and the general public.Enhancing knowledge about the extent of human influence on fire regimes of past millennia has important implications for the understanding and management of fire-adapted vegetation communities in the U.S. and around the world. Bark-peeled pine can provide a compelling context of land use to inform interpretations of an extensive and growing fire history and forest age structure. The investigator will use dendrochronological dating of peel scars on trees in the Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness to provide the first absolutely dated and spatially precise record of Ojibwe land use in the Great Lakes region. Parametric and non-parametric tests will be performed to compare fire frequency, fire synchrony, and spatial association of areas of high fire frequency with peel-scar occurrence in order to ascertain the association between human and fire activity. Collaboration with archaeologists will provide the cultural context for the tree-ring data and will enable a direct examination of the influence people had on the fire regimes and vegetation communities of this wilderness area. The results of this work will establish a new understanding of the role of people in the pre-European landscape that will help guide future research and management in the Great Lakes Region and throughout temperate forest regions of the world.