RAPID: Quantifying the Effects of Historical Indigenous Burning and Bison on Mountain Valley Forest Structure and Fire Regimes

该奖项被称为快速反应研究（RAPID）。 调查人员计划恢复将被计划于2017年春季进行的森林烧毁的数据。 前和后殖民时期的美洲原住民积极管理他们的自然环境，通过使用火来生产草原和提高野牛的人口，这在危险的数据有可能提供关键的见解自然资源管理实践的北美原住民从1600年到现在。 该研究的一个关键要素是使用恢复的数据来绘制加拿大阿尔伯塔省清水谷的景观，并估计该地区历史上到现在支持的野牛的数量。 了解该地区历史上的生态系统和野牛种群是决定在落基山脉地区重新引入野牛物种的关键部分。 作为早期美洲原住民用于食物、住所、衣服和宗教活动的生存物种，野牛是该地区文化和自然的关键物种。 作为一种在19世纪末被猎杀到濒临灭绝的物种，目前，公共和部落土地管理者都在考虑将野牛重新引入当代生态系统的项目。 研究人员认为，在19世纪末，野牛和传统的土著土地管理从这些生态系统中消失后，景观发生了重大变化，以至于可能不再适合野牛重新引入。 该项目将绘制地图，量化，并提供见解如何土著燃烧历史上创造的栖息地支持大量野牛人口在落基山脉附近的班夫国家公园（BNP）在加拿大，这可以与其他地区的北方文化燃烧也实行。 此外，研究人员还将深入了解这些景观变化及其消失对当今森林，火灾和动物群管理的影响。预计RAPID区域特别适合研究; 1）班夫国家公园有一个野牛再引入计划，2）这是一个土著民族（如库特奈人）历史上使用文化燃烧为野牛创造开放和营养丰富的草地栖息地的区域。今天，由于传统的土著燃烧被排除在外，现代灭火的引入和其他因素，这些和类似的落基山脉山谷被茂密的森林覆盖。 为了评估和实现类似于历史上存在的野牛恢复目标，在传统的土著管理时期，量化景观条件是至关重要的。火灾管理计划和野牛再引入群体之间的协调有利于双方的利益，并提高实现野牛种群恢复目标的几率。该项目将通过创建一个3D延时地图来展示和量化野牛栖息地的变化，该地图显示了加拿大阿尔伯塔省清水河谷从17世纪至今的变化。 研究小组将利用现代树木年代学，交叉测定历史火灾留下的树木疤痕，重现山谷的火灾历史。这一阶段的研究将产生一个林分年龄结构重建，一个传统的火痕历史使用程序FHAES，一个气候重建（以确定人类活动与气候对火灾状况随时间变化的影响程度），比较已知的历史人类和野牛种群事件（如天花爆发）与火灾频率和树木招聘的变化，时空GIS地图汇编上述所有。 此外，无人驾驶飞行器（UAV）将收集三维景观数据，以测量山谷的现代生物景观。 一个数字延时地图将纳入树木年轮的历史，以延长三维景观模型回到过去。最后，研究人员将估计清水谷样本区在过去300多年的时间里生物质燃烧发生了多大变化。该项目的树木年代学和三维时空GIS的新融合扩展了跨学科界限的科学方法的可能性。这项研究的结果也将适用于跨越国界，不仅显示了多少景观的变化将是必要的班夫国家公园的野牛恢复目标，但也表明需要类似的调查，北美各地的土地管理人员。

This award is supported as Rapid Response Research (RAPID). The investigators plan to recover data that will be destroyed by a planned forest burn scheduled for Spring 2017. Pre and post-colonial period Native Americans actively managed their natural environments through the use of fire to produce grasslands and boost bison populations and this at risk data has the potential to provide critical insights into the natural resource management practices of Native North Americans from the 1600's to the present. A key element of the research is to use the recovered data to map the landscape of the Clear Water Valley in Alberta Canada and to estimate the population numbers of bison supported in the region historically to the present. Understanding the historic ecosystem and the bison populations in the region is a critical part of the decision to reintroduce bison species in the Rocky Mountain region. As a subsistence species utilized by early Native Americans for food, shelter, clothing, and religious practice, bison are a cultural and natural keystone species in the region. As a species hunted to near extinction by the late 1800's, currently, both public and Tribal land managers are considering projects to reintroduce bison into contemporary ecosystems. The researchers argue that after bison and traditional indigenous land management were removed from these ecosystems in the late 1800's the landscape substantially changed, to the point that it may no longer be suitable for bison reintroduction. The project will map, quantify, and provide insights into how Indigenous burning historically created habitats supporting substantial bison populations in the Rocky Mountains near Banff National Park (BNP) in Canada, which can be compared to other regions of the North where cultural burning was also practiced. In addition, the researchers will provide insights into the implications of these landscape transformations and their disappearance for the management of forests, fire, and fauna today. The region for the RAPID is anticipated to be particularly well suited for study; 1) Banff National Park has a bison reintroduction program and 2) it is a region where Indigenous peoples, such as the Kootenai, historically used cultural burning to create open and nutrient-enriched grassy habitat for bison. Today, these and similar Rocky Mountain valleys are densely forested due to the exclusion of traditional indigenous burning, the introduction of modern fire suppression, and other factors. In order to assess and achieve bison restoration objectives similar to what existed historically, it is vital to quantify landscape condition during the period of traditional indigenous management. Coordination between fire management programs and bison reintroduction groups could benefit the interests of both groups and improve the odds of attaining bison population restoration goals.This project will demonstrate and quantify changes in bison habitat by creating a 3D time-lapse map showing the transformation of the Clearwater Valley in Alberta, Canada from the 1600s to present. The research team will recreate the valley's fire history using modern dendrochronology, cross-dating tree scars left by historical fires. This phase of research will produce a stand age structure reconstruction, a traditional fire scar history using the program FHAES, a climate reconstruction (to determine the degree of anthropogenic vs. climatic influence on the fire regime(s) over time), a comparison of known historical human and bison population events (such as smallpox outbreaks) with fire frequency and tree recruitment shifts, and spatiotemporal GIS maps compiling all of the above. In addition, an unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) will collect 3-dimensional landscape data to measure the valley's modern biotic landscape. A digital time-lapse map will incorporate the tree-ring history to extend the 3D landscape model back in time. Lastly, the investigators will derive estimates of how much biomass burning has changed over the course of the last 300+ years in the Clearwater Valley sample area. The project's novel fusion of dendrochronology and 3D spatiotemporal GIS expands the realm of what is possible for scientific methodology across disciplinary boundaries. The results of this study will also be applicable across national boundaries by showing not only how much change in the landscape would be necessary for Banff National Park's bison restoration goals, but also demonstrate the need for similar investigations by land managers across North America.