Land Use Legacies in Agroecosystems

该奖项的全部或部分资金来自《2021年美国救援计划法案》(公法117-2)。该奖项是作为NSF社会、行为和经济学博士后研究奖学金(SPRF)计划的一部分提供的。SPRF计划的目标是为学术界、工业界或私营部门和政府的科学职业生涯培养有前途的、早期职业博士水平的科学家。SPRF奖项包括在知名科学家的赞助下进行两年的培训，并鼓励博士后研究员进行独立研究。国家科学基金会致力于促进科学界所有阶层的科学家参与其研究方案和活动，包括那些来自代表性不足的群体的科学家；博士后阶段被认为是实现这一目标的专业发展的一个重要水平。每个博士后研究员都必须解决推动各自学科领域向前发展的重要科学问题。在罗格斯大学丹·卡巴尼斯博士的赞助下，这一博士后奖学金奖项支持一位研究农业生态系统土地利用遗产的早期职业科学家。农业用地是影响地球系统的最强大的人为力量之一。尽管大多数历史科学家都认为，几千年来，农业一直在塑造地貌，但仍然很难量化过去土地利用的时间和强度及其长期(遗留)影响。过去土地利用的不明确性不仅模糊了我们对过去人与环境关系的理解，也损害了我们理解重要生态系统功能的长期恢复能力的集体能力，这些功能对现代人口具有现实世界的后果。本研究通过考察已知的历史农业土地利用(遗产)对现代土壤微型植物(植物体)的影响，并建立它们之间的定量关系，促进了人与环境的相互作用研究。该项目结合了地理空间、地球化学、古环境和人种学方法，作为综合方法的一部分。这项研究发生在农业的连续记录的地方，是检验半干旱农业生态系统长期动态的理想选择。这项研究的总体目标不仅是定义植物硅石可用于调查古代土地利用的精确度，而且通过揭示人类与环境相互作用的潜在有价值的信息来源，为未来的研究提供支持。这一奖项反映了NSF的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的智力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 award is funded in whole or in part under the American Rescue Plan Act of 2021 (Public Law 117-2). This award was provided as part of NSF's Social, Behavioral and Economic Sciences Postdoctoral Research Fellowships (SPRF) program. The goal of the SPRF program is to prepare promising, early career doctoral-level scientists for scientific careers in academia, industry or private sector, and government. SPRF awards involve two years of training under the sponsorship of established scientists and encourage Postdoctoral Fellows to perform independent research. NSF seeks to promote the participation of scientists from all segments of the scientific community, including those from underrepresented groups, in its research programs and activities; the postdoctoral period is considered to be an important level of professional development in attaining this goal. Each Postdoctoral Fellow must address important scientific questions that advance their respective disciplinary fields. Under the sponsorship of Dr. Dan Cabanes at Rutgers University, this postdoctoral fellowship award supports an early career scientist investigating land use legacies in agroecosystems. Agricultural land use is one of the most powerful anthropogenic forces influencing Earth’s systems. Although most historical scientists agree that agriculture has been shaping landscapes for millennia, it remains difficult to quantify the timing and intensity of past land use as well as its long term (legacy) effects. The lack of clarity concerning past land use not only obscures our understanding of past human-environment relationships, it also impairs our collective ability to understand the long-term resilience capacities of vital ecosystem functions with real-world consequences for modern populations. This research advances human-environmental interaction research by examining the effects of known historical agricultural land use (legacies) on modern soil microbotanicals (phytoliths) and establishing the quantitative relationships between them. The project combines geospatial, geochemical, paleoenvironmental, and ethnographic methods as part of an integrated approach. The research take place where this is continuous records of agriculture and is ideal for examining the long-term dynamics of semi-arid agroecosystems. The overall goal of this research is not only to define the precision with which phytoliths can be used to investigate ancient land use, but also to empower future research by unlocking a potentially valuable source of information on human-environmental interactions.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.