Long Term Settlement Pattern and Environmental Patterning Interaction

该项目调查了过去人类对热带森林的适应以及过去土地利用策略对环境的影响。热带森林经常被认为是脆弱的景观，没有提供足够的资源来维持大量人口，而不进行实质性的改变。然而，长期存在的传统粮食生产做法，涉及对森林生态的复杂理解和管理土地覆盖植被的好处，表明人们在与环境的几千年相互作用中发展出了可持续的方法来养活自己。该项目考察了过去的定居点遗迹和环境代理数据，以评估对土地利用、可持续性和热带森林适应性的解释。它将从过去确定可能可持续的农业做法，为未来的发展计划和政策提供信息。在当代热带地区，长期的土地管理至关重要，因为热带地区经历了森林砍伐带来的极端变化，预计未来人口增长将达到最高水平。该项目将为学生、专业同事和志愿者提供参与研究的机会。调查人员将通过与社区组织、政府机构和非政府组织协调活动来扩大当地网络和伙伴关系，以促进对长期热带低地生态的更大的科学认识。这个项目产生的新数据将用于协助规划教育和发展项目。该团队将研究过去的社会如何创造和维持密集的定居点和在热带森林中蓬勃发展的农业系统。居住者建造了巨大的中心，大量人口曾经居住在今天被认为是边缘的热带环境中。许多考古学家认为，热带地区不断增长的人口已经超过了森林的承受能力，造成了导致“崩溃”的环境脆弱性。然而，在某些情况下，几个世纪以来种群数量稳步增长，现代森林的组成表明有长期管理，这提高了对森林的传统适应是可持续的可能性。这个由考古学家、植物学家、地理学家、孢粉学家和土壤科学家组成的研究小组将通过研究数据来解决这个问题。从野外调查、遥感激光雷达图像、土壤和湖泊岩心以及现代植被评估中获得的考古和环境数据将整合到地理信息系统中，以建立农业用地适宜性和人类环境影响模型。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。

This project investigates past human adaptations to tropical forests and the environmental impacts of past land-use strategies. Tropical forests are regularly dismissed as fragile landscapes, providing inadequate resources to sustain large populations without substantial modification. Yet long-surviving traditional food-production practices, involving sophisticated understandings of forest ecology and the benefits of managing vegetation for land cover, suggest that populations developed sustainable methods to support themselves over millennia of interactions with their environment. This project examines past settlement remains and environmental proxy data to assess interpretations of land use, sustainability, and adaptations to tropical forests. It will identify potentially sustainable agricultural practices from the past that can inform future development programs and policies. Long term land-management is essential in the contemporary tropics, which have endured extreme changes from deforestation and are projected to host the highest levels of future population growth. The project will provide opportunities for students, professional colleagues, and volunteers to engage in the research. Investigators will expand local networks and partnerships by coordinating activities with community-based organizations, governmental agencies, and non-governmental organizations to promote greater scientific knowledge of long term tropical lowland ecology. New data generated by this project will be available to aid in planning projects for education and development. The team will examine how a past society created and sustained dense settlements and a farming system that flourished in the tropical forest. The occupants built monumental centers and large populations once inhabited a tropical environment considered marginal today. Many archaeologists believe that growing populations in tropical regions have outstripped the ability of the forest to sustain them, creating conditions of environmental vulnerability that lead to “collapse.” Yet in some cases populations increased steadily for centuries and the composition of the contemporary forest indicates long-term management, raising the possibility that traditional adaptations to the forest were sustainable. The research team, comprising archaeologists, botanists, geographers, palynologists, and soil scientists, will examine data to address this question. Archaeological and environmental data derived from field survey, remotely sensed Lidar imagery, soil and lake cores, and modern vegetation assessment will be integrated into a Geographic Information Systems to build models of agricultural land suitability and human environmental impacts.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.