Pre-Columbian Human Modifications of Terra Firme and Fluvial Forest in Western Amazonia: Terrestrial Soil Phytolith and Charcoal Records

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Dr. Dolores Piperno of the Smithsonian Institution will explore pre-Columbian human modifications of tropical environments. The Amazon Basin located in the heart of tropical South America and stretching from the Atlantic ocean to the Andes is an area approximately the size of the continental United States. It is presently home to the largest contiguous expanse of American tropical forest and it contains much of what remains of the New World's indigenous cultural and biological diversity. Numerous studies show how this diversity is ancient, its species-rich forests being tens of millions of years ago and its native cultures dating to first human entrance of the Americas 15,000 years ago. Understanding how past patterns of natural- and human-caused alterations of the Amazonian forest affected its biology and cultures, including still in the present time, is therefore of considerable importance to environmental historians, archaeologists, climate modelers, and conservation biologists alike. For example, organizations increasingly rely on such information to formulate good policies, including by better understanding species resilience in the face of significant disturbance. With this research, the researchers will undertake reconstructions of vegetation and fire history across five different regions of Amazonia through analysis and dating of plant fossils that they have sampled from directly underneath present-day forests. The researchers will provide sensitive indices of both cultural and natural influences on past and modern forest. This project will carry out phytolith and charcoal analyses on terrestrial soils sampled from remote, previously unstudied regions and areas of western Amazonia where they have hypothesized human impacts were less significant than in other regions. The problems addressed in this research are of high interest to, and align with important questions from diverse scholarly disciplines focused on human/environmental relationships with the present and future Amazon as well as its past. Conservation, sustainability, and reforestation programs are more successful if environmental histories are understood, and these programs are also extremely important to modern indigenous societies who seek to utilize well their natural resources. Climate modelers and forecasters require more information about the effects of prehistoric activities on past atmospheres, so that they can better model the links between present and future atmospheric conditions and tropical/global environmental change.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.