Human Response To El Nino-Driven Environmental Change

人类对厄尔尼诺现象驱动的环境变化的反应

• 批准号: 1624189
• 负责人: Jack Broughton
• 金额: $ 20.56万
• 依托单位: University of Utah
• 依托单位国家: 美国
• 项目类别: Standard Grant
• 财政年份: 2016
• 资助国家: 美国
• 起止时间: 2016-07-01 至 2018-06-30
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/showAward?AWD_ID=1624189&HistoricalAwards=false
• 关键词: Human; Response; El; Nino; Driven

Extreme variation in climate is a topic of concern across the globe. Jack Broughton and Joan Coltrain, of the University of Utah, will undertake research to study how variation in the intensity and frequency of El Niño events in northern Baja California, Mexico over the past 11,000 years influenced marine and terrestrial fish, birds, and mammals. Their research will also investigate how past peoples responded to changes in the availability of different animal resources. This research will provide novel data sets from which to anticipate change in future animal populations under a range of forecasted El Niño-related variation scenarios and thus support current and future management of marine and terrestrial animals of the eastern Pacific. The project will also reveal how human populations responded to past El Niño and provide insight into the impact of future El Niño events on coastal societies in developing countries. Although the impacts of ancient El Niño events on past human societies and animals have been documented in specific isolated cases, continuous, high-resolution, millennial-scale records of the impact of El Niño variation on animal resources and the resulting changes in the human use of North American landscapes have yet to be documented. This project will generate just such a record from a massive collection of animal bones and artifacts that was deposited over the past 11,000 years by people and raptors (hawks, eagles, owls) that occupied a rock shelter site (Abrigo de los Escorpiones) located about 100 m from the Pacific coast of northern Baja California, Mexico. The currently archived animal bone collection includes both marine and terrestrial species and represents one of the largest, well-stratified, continuous, records of climate-based changes in animal populations on the Pacific coast of North America. A rich record of artifacts and features (e.g., fire hearths, marine shell layers) attest to a substantial but intermittent human use of the shelter. The project will determine whether people abandoned the coastal site during periods with high El Niño frequencies. Such times are characterized by both warm sea-surface temperatures that disrupt marine ecosystems and increased precipitation that enhances the productivity of inland habitats. The study will involve: (1) identification of the animal bones to the species level, (2) radiocarbon dating of a large sample of the bones to establish a time-line and chronology for the deposits, (3) establishing a record of human occupational intensity of the site through artifact counts and evidence of human-caused damage on animal bones (e.g., stone tool cut marks, burning), (4) stable isotope analysis of both bones and shells to provide information on El Niño variation over the past 11,000 years, and (5) statistical analysis to determine correlations between variation in past El Niño and change in local animal and human populations.

气候的极端变化是全球关注的话题。犹他大学的杰克·布劳顿和琼·科尔特兰将开展研究，研究过去11,000年来墨西哥下加利福尼亚州北部厄尔尼诺事件强度和频率的变化如何影响海洋和陆地鱼类、鸟类和哺乳动物。他们的研究还将调查过去的人类如何应对不同动物资源可获得性的变化。这项研究将提供新的数据集，以预测在一系列预测的厄尔尼诺相关变化情景下未来动物种群的变化，从而支持对东太平洋海洋和陆地动物的当前和未来管理。该项目还将揭示人类如何应对过去的厄尔尼诺现象，并深入了解未来厄尔尼诺事件对发展中国家沿海社会的影响。虽然古代厄尔尼诺事件对过去人类社会和动物的影响已在具体的孤立案例中得到记录，但关于厄尔尼诺变化对动物资源的影响以及由此引起的人类对北美地貌利用的变化的持续、高分辨率、千年尺度的记录还有待记录。这个项目将从过去11000年来人类和猛禽(鹰、鹰、猫头鹰)存放的大量动物骨骼和文物中产生这样的记录，这些猛禽和猛禽占据了距离墨西哥下加利福尼亚州北部太平洋海岸约100米的一个岩石庇护所(Abrigo De Los Ecorpiones)。目前存档的动物骨骼包括海洋和陆地物种，是北美太平洋海岸动物种群气候变化的最大、分层良好、连续的记录之一。文物和特征(如火炉、海洋贝壳)的丰富记录证明，人类对避难所的使用是大量的，但却是断断续续的。该项目将确定人们是否在厄尔尼诺现象高发期间放弃了沿海地区。这一时期的特点既有破坏海洋生态系统的温暖的海面温度，也有提高内陆栖息地生产力的降水增加。这项研究将涉及：(1)确定动物骨骼的物种水平；(2)对大量骨骼样本进行放射性碳测年，以建立沉积的时间线和年表；(3)通过人工计数和人类对动物骨骼造成损害的证据(例如，石器切割痕迹、焚烧)，建立该地点人类职业强度的记录；(4)对骨骼和贝壳进行稳定同位素分析，以提供过去11 000年厄尔尼诺现象变化的信息，以及(5)统计分析，以确定过去厄尔尼诺现象的变化与当地动物和人类种群变化之间的相关性。