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

该奖项被支持为快速反应研究(RAPID)。调查人员计划恢复数据，这些数据将被计划于2017年春季烧毁的森林摧毁。在殖民时期之前和之后，美洲原住民通过使用火来积极管理他们的自然环境，以建造草原和增加野牛数量，这些处于危险中的数据有可能为从1600年到现在的北美原住民的自然资源管理实践提供关键的见解。这项研究的一个关键要素是使用恢复的数据绘制加拿大艾伯塔省清水谷的地貌图，并估计该地区从历史到现在支持的野牛种群数量。了解该地区的历史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、衣物和宗教活动的生存物种，野牛是该地区文化和自然的基石物种。作为一种在19世纪末被猎杀到濒临灭绝的物种S，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，S的生态系统发生了实质性的变化，以至于可能不再适合重新引入野牛。该项目将绘制地图，量化土著焚烧历史上如何在加拿大班夫国家公园(BNP)附近的落基山脉创造支持大量野牛种群的栖息地，并提供见解，这可以与北方其他地区进行文化焚烧进行比较。此外，研究人员将深入了解这些景观变化及其消失对当今森林、火灾和动物管理的影响。RAPID的地区预计特别适合研究；1)班夫国家公园有一个野牛重新引入计划；2)它是一个土著人民，如库特奈人，历史上使用文化焚烧为野牛创造开放和营养丰富的草地栖息地。今天，由于排除了传统的土著燃烧，引入了现代灭火和其他因素，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，量化传统土著管理时期的景观状况是至关重要的。火灾管理计划和野牛重新引入小组之间的协调可能会有利于两个群体的利益，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张3D时间推移地图来演示和量化野牛栖息地的变化，该地图显示了加拿大艾伯塔省清水谷从17世纪到现在的变化。研究小组将使用现代树木年代学，交叉测定历史火灾留下的树木伤痕，重现山谷的火灾历史。这一阶段的研究将产生林分年龄结构重建、使用FHAES程序的传统火灾伤疤历史、气候重建(以确定人为和气候随时间对火灾制度的影响程度)、已知历史上人类和野牛种群事件(如天花爆发)与火灾频率和树木招募转变的比较，以及汇编所有上述内容的时空地理信息系统地图。此外，无人机(UAV)将收集三维景观数据，以测量山谷的现代生物景观。数字延时地图将结合树木年轮历史，将3D景观模型扩展到过去。最后，研究人员将对过去300年来清水河谷样本区的生物质燃烧发生了多少变化进行估计。该项目的树状年代学和三维时空地理信息系统的新颖融合扩大了科学方法论可能跨越学科边界的领域。这项研究的结果也将适用于国家边界，不仅表明班夫国家公园的野牛恢复目标需要对景观进行多大程度的改变，而且还表明北美各地的土地管理者需要进行类似的调查。

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.