DDRIG: Soil-Stratigraphy and Landscape Evolution in Subarctic Lowlands: A Paleoenvironmental Framework for Human Colonization and Occupation of Eastern Beringia

DDRIG：亚北极低地的土壤地层学和景观演化：人类殖民和占领东白令海峡的古环境框架

• 批准号: 1636716
• 负责人: Vance Holliday
• 金额: $ 2.97万
• 依托单位: University of Arizona
• 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: 2016-09-01 至 2019-01-31
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/showAward?AWD_ID=1636716&HistoricalAwards=false
• 关键词: DDRIG; Soil; Stratigraphy; Landscape; Evolution

This award will support the research of graduate student Jennifer Kielhofer to recreate the prehistoric landscape of eastern Beringia approximately 14,000 years ago. Beringia is the area between Alaska and Russia that is currently covered by the Bering Sea, but 14,000 years ago was dry land, prior to the rise in sealevel that occurred when the massive North American Ice Sheets melted. Understanding what the landscape looked like at this time will give us insights into the early human migrations across this landscape that occurred during this time period. Knowing this will give scientists and interested members of the public a better understanding of what resources were available for these early migrants to exploit for food, shelter, and clothing. How difficult the landscape was to traverse and how long this would take. These are questions important to answer in order to have a full picture of how the ancestors of contemporary Native American peoples migrated to North America. The proposed research uses buried soils as indicators of landscape evolution within lowland terrestrial settings of subarctic central Alaska. This work provides a paleoenvironmental framework for human colonization of eastern Beringia ~14,000 to 8,000 calibrated years before present (cal. B.P.). Using the "soil catena" approach, this project explores the relationship between past soil formation and climatic variability on various temporal and spatial scales. Buried soils are generally associated with early archaeological occupations in central Alaska, so it is critical to understand the environmental factors that influenced soil formation and the archaeological record. Many studies assert a link between global-scale millennial climatic variability and past soil formation in the study region, but more recent research argues that local disturbance cycles may have had a significant impact on soil formation. This project hypothesizes that both broader scale climatic change and local disturbance cycles influenced soil formation, and aims to develop a high-resolution micromorphological (soil petrographic) dataset to test this hypothesis. Major research objectives are to: 1) develop a highresolution record of landscape evolution, based on changes in past soil development across an elevational transect in the study catchment, 2) augment terrestrial paleoenvironmental records and compare them directly to archaeological datasets, and finally, 3) assess potential environmental impacts on human ecology and land use in lowland subarctic settings.

该奖项将支持研究生詹妮弗·基尔霍夫（Jennifer Kielhofer）的研究，以重现大约14，000年前贝林亚东部的史前景观。 贝林亚（Beringia）是阿拉斯加和俄罗斯目前被白令海覆盖的地区，但14，000年前是干燥的土地，在北美巨大的北美冰盖融化时发生的海升升高之前。 了解此时的景观的样子将使我们对在此期间发生的这种景观中的早期人类迁移的见解。 知道这将使科学家和感兴趣的公众对这些早期移民的可用资源有更好的了解，以利用食物，庇护所和服装。 景观很难穿越，这需要多长时间。 这些问题是要回答的问题，以便全面了解当代美国原住民的祖先如何迁移到北美。 拟议的研究使用埋藏的土壤作为阿拉斯加亚亚州中部低地陆地环境中景观进化的指标。这项工作提供了一个古环境框架，用于在现场之前约14,000至8,000年的人类殖民化（Cal。B.P。）。使用“土壤CATENA”方法，该项目探讨了过去的土壤形成与各种时间尺度上的气候变异性之间的关系。埋藏的土壤通常与阿拉斯加中部的早期考古职业有关，因此了解影响土壤形成和考古记录的环境因素至关重要。许多研究宣称，研究区域中全球规模的千禧一代气候变异性与过去的土壤形成之间的联系，但是最近的研究表明，当地的干扰周期可能对土壤形成产生了重大影响。该项目假设更广泛的规模气候变化和局部干扰周期影响了土壤的形成，并旨在开发高分辨率的微态（土壤岩石学）数据集以检验该假设。主要的研究目标是：1）基于研究集水区中海拔率横切的过去土壤发育的变化，发展景观演化的高分辨率记录，2）增强地面陆地古环境记录并将其直接与考古数据集进行了比较，并将其与考古数据集进行了比较，最后，3）评估对人类生态学和陆地在低地subararcctic subararcctic sabararcctic saubarcctic sastical subarcctic sative interiage。