Doctoral Dissertation Improvement Award: Employing Remote Sensing Techniques to Examine Land Use Change

在这篇博士论文改进基金中，新墨西哥大学的Jennie Sturm女士将利用一个史前的例子来研究经济土地利用影响干旱环境下社区社会复杂性上升的过程。当地社区设计其景观以促进农业、水资源管理和其他经济活动的程度，与他们依赖外部参与的程度相比，往往是衡量该社区在其环境中取得成功的一个指标，也是达到不同社会复杂性水平的一个潜在因素。通过关注过去土地改造的物理残余，考古学非常适合为过去的社会及其管理土地使用的策略提供视角。这对今天的美国尤其重要，因为人们越来越意识到土地改造对环境的长期影响。从诸如此类的研究中收集的信息与当代沙漠城市面临的许多问题直接相关，包括农业管理、水资源利用和城市规划。在这个项目中，研究人员将确定和比较干旱环境中土地改造的模式，并评估如何利用这些模式来推断更广泛的土地利用系统。这项研究将在新墨西哥州的查科文化国家历史公园（CCNHP）进行，也被称为查科峡谷。查科峡谷是史前美国西南部最大和最复杂的社会之一，因此包含了经济土地利用如何促进其崛起的重要信息。研究人员将使用遥感方法，包括探地雷达和航空摄影，来记录查科的土地使用模式。记录下来的土地使用模式将允许对土地使用的变化进行严格的评价，复制土地修改，以及遵守或拒绝更广泛的经济土地管理制度。考古遥感在绘制土地使用模式方面尤其有效，包括那些埋在地表以下的土地，以高效、非破坏性的方式，并坚持国家公园的保护使命。这项研究的结果将提供给CCNHP，包括作为公共宣传和解释的一部分，并将作为公园文化资源管理工具的有用工具。Jennie Sturm在数据收集的同时举办的培训讲习班也将使学生获得遥感技术的实践经验，这些技术正在迅速影响多个行业。

In this Doctoral Dissertation Improvement grant, Ms. Jennie Sturm of the University of New Mexico will utilize a prehistoric example to examine the processes by which economic land use affected the rise in social complexity of a community living in an arid environment. The degree to which local communities engineer their landscapes to facilitate agriculture, water management, and other economic activities, versus the degree to which they depend on outside involvement, is often a measure of that community's success in their environment and an underlying factor in reaching different levels of social complexity. By focusing on the physical remnants of past land modification, archaeology is well-suited to provide perspective on past societies and their strategies for managing land use. This is especially important for the present day United States because of the increasing awareness of the long-term environmental impacts from land modification. Information gathered from studies such as this one is directly relevant for many issues facing contemporary desert cities, including agricultural management, water usage, and urban planning. For this project, researchers will identify and compare patterns of land modification in an arid environment and evaluate how such patterns can be used to infer a broader system of land use. This research will take place in Chaco Culture National Historical Park (CCNHP), also known as Chaco Canyon, in New Mexico. Chaco Canyon was the location of one of the largest and most socially complex societies in the prehistoric American Southwest, and thus contains crucial information on how economic land use contributed to its rise. The researchers will use remote sensing methods, including ground-penetrating radar and aerial photography, to document land use patterns within Chaco. The land use patterns documented will allow rigorous evaluation of changes in land use, replication of land modifications, and adherence to or rejection of a broader system of economic land management. Archaeological remote sensing is particularly effective in mapping land use patterns, including those that are buried below the surface, in ways that are efficient, non-destructive, and adhere to the National Park's mission of preservation. The results of this research will be provided to CCNHP to include as part of public outreach and interpretation, and will be useful to the park as a management tool for their cultural resources. Training workshops conducted by Jennie Sturm in concurrence with data collection will also allow students to gain hands-on experience with remote sensing techniques that are rapidly affecting multiple industries.