Human Response To High Altitude Environmental Change

在一个快速变化的世界中，理解人类如何在应对气候变化的同时设法维持粮食安全至关重要。然而，人类对局部环境中长期周期性波动的适应性反应却知之甚少。更重要的是了解人类如何应对气候变化，而不是在世界上少数几个最适宜的地区，而是在关键的边缘地区，那里数百万小农和牧民的生计岌岌可危。考古学独一无二地准备回答这样的问题：为什么某些类型的系统对气候变化具有弹性，而其他类型的系统却分崩离析？哪些类型的战略不仅适用于短期，而且适用于数千年？Alpoim Guedes博士将与同事一起进行研究，以了解人类如何在过去两千年来一系列重大气候逆转的背景下调整其农业和牧业战略。通过审查地方一级不同适应战略的潜力，并对人类决策的后果提供长期视角，这项研究有可能进一步生产更多样化、更适应当地的粮食来源，使其在面对气候变化时具有弹性。除了为当地大学的学生提供实地考察学校外，它还为美国少数民族本科生以及两名早期职业科学家提供国际实地考察经验。阿尔波姆·盖德斯博士和他的同事将在一个关键的边缘地区--中国的东喜马拉雅高海拔环境--研究人类如何应对和适应气候变化。除了通过分析动植物遗骸重建古代的生存模式外，研究人员还将调查不同类型的社会组织如何促进或损害人类的适应。项目研究人员将开发模型来预测气候变化对农作物和牧草产量的影响。这些模型中的每一个都将被用来预测产量如何波动，不仅是在过去，而且在未来预测的情况下也是如此。通过勾勒出不同因素之间复杂的相互作用，这些因素决定了农作物和牧草资源如何对气候和生态变量的变化做出反应，为该项目创建的模型可以应用于世界其他高海拔/高纬度地区，特别是美国的那些地区。

Understanding how humans have managed to maintain food security while dealing with climatic change is crucial in a rapidly changing world. However, human adaptive responses to periodic fluctuations in local environment over the long term are poorly understood. Even more crucial is understanding how humans responded to climatic change, not in the few optimal areas of the world, but rather in key marginal loci where the livelihoods of millions of smallholder farmers and pastoralists are at stake. Archaeology is uniquely poised to answer questions such as: Why are certain types of system resilient to climate change while others fall apart? What types of strategy are adaptive not just over the short term but for millennia? Along with colleagues, Dr. Alpoim Guedes will carry out research to understand how humans modified their agricultural and pastoral strategies in the context of a series of major climatic reversals over the past two millennia. By examining the potential for different adaptive strategies at the local level and providing a long term perspective on the consequences of human decision making, this research has the potential to further the production of more diverse, and more locally-adapted food sources that are resilient in the face of climate change. In addition to serving as a field school for students from a local university, it provides an international fieldwork experience for US minority undergraduates as well as two early career scientists. Dr. Alpoim Guedes and colleagues will investigate how humans responded to and adapted to climatic fluctuations in one key marginal area: the high altitude environment of Eastern Himalayas of China. In addition to reconstructing ancient subsistence patterns through the analysis of plant and animal remains, the researchers will investigate how different types of social organization facilitated or impaired human adaptation. Project researchers will develop models to predict how crop and forage grass production was impacted by climatic change. Each of these models will be used to predict how production fluctuated not only in the past but also in future predicted scenarios. By outlining the complex interactions between different factors that determine how crops and graze resources react to changes in climatic and ecological variables, the models created for this project can be applied to other high altitude/high latitude areas worldwide, particularly those in the United States.