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

史密森学会的Dolores Piperno博士将探索前哥伦布时代人类对热带环境的改变。亚马逊盆地位于热带南美洲的中心地带，从大西洋一直延伸到安第斯山脉，面积与美国大陆差不多大。目前，它是美国最大的连续热带森林的所在地，它包含了新世界土著文化和生物多样性的大部分遗迹。许多研究表明，这种多样性是多么古老，其物种丰富的森林在数千万年前就已经存在，其本土文化可以追溯到15,000年前人类首次进入美洲。因此，了解过去自然和人为造成的亚马逊森林变化模式如何影响其生物和文化，包括现在，对环境历史学家、考古学家、气候建模者和保护生物学家都具有相当重要的意义。例如，组织越来越依赖这些信息来制定良好的政策，包括更好地了解物种在面对重大干扰时的恢复能力。在这项研究中，研究人员将通过分析和确定植物化石的年代，对亚马逊河流域五个不同地区的植被和火灾历史进行重建，这些植物化石是他们从现代森林的正下方采集的。研究人员将提供对过去和现代森林的文化和自然影响的敏感指数。该项目将对从以前未研究过的偏远地区和亚马逊西部地区取样的陆地土壤进行植物岩和木炭分析，这些地区的人类影响比其他地区要小。本研究解决的问题引起了人们的高度兴趣，并与不同学术学科的重要问题保持一致，这些学科关注的是人类/环境与亚马逊现在和未来以及过去的关系。如果了解环境历史，保护、可持续发展和重新造林计划将更加成功，这些计划对寻求充分利用自然资源的现代土著社会也极为重要。气候建模者和预报员需要更多关于史前活动对过去大气影响的信息，以便他们能够更好地模拟当前和未来大气条件与热带/全球环境变化之间的联系。该奖项反映了美国国家科学基金会的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的知识价值和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估，被认为值得支持。

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.