DISES: Cultural resilience and shifting baselines of the North American fur trade

今天的国际市场将全球动物产品的供需联系起来。社会对全球生物运动的依赖性日益增强，影响了生物多样性，包括灭绝和入侵。这影响了人们赖以生存的生态系统服务。经济收获的做法是在16 -19世纪由北美毛皮贸易建立的。它们可以帮助我们理解当今复杂的人类-生态耦合系统。欧洲人对哺乳动物毛皮的需求改变了北美原住民的生活，改变了数千年的传统收获方式。然而，我们对这种巨大的收获对生态的影响知之甚少，而这种影响塑造了北美生态系统的结构和功能。该项目整合了考古、历史和现代数据和标本，研究了过去几千年来海狸、麝鼠和水貂的种群。它将利用这些跨学科数据来了解大规模采伐的后果、生态系统的变化以及不同文化习俗对毛皮动物的影响。该项目更广泛的影响包括使在研究、管理和政策方面做出贡献的个人的参与多样化。这项研究采用了多种方法和视角。研究工具包括古代DNA测序、稳定同位素分析、动物考古学、形态计量学和野生动物生态学。通过比较从俄勒冈州到缅因州的平行文化和生态系统，该研究将评估不同的文化实践如何塑造物种和生态结果。它还将研究这些环境变化如何影响未来的决策、实践和社会动态，同时描述随时间变化的耦合社会生态景观。这将提供一个强大的多维模式，促进生物多样性和传统生计的保护。这个模型将探索物种如何以及为什么会恢复，以及在不同的数据集中恢复的特征是什么，这些数据集通常不是统一和联合分析的。这个弹性和恢复的长期数据集将为当地毛皮动物管理和世界自然保护联盟绿色名录提供有价值和适用的经验教训。该项目由综合社会环境系统动力学（DISES）计划和促进竞争研究的既定计划（EPSCoR）联合资助。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。

Today’s international markets connect supply and demand for, animal products around the globe. The increasing interdependence of societies on global movement of living things has impacted biodiversity, including extinctions and invasions. This impacts ecosystem services that people rely on. Economic harvest practices were established during the 16th-19th centuries by the North American fur trade. They can provide an understanding of today’s complex coupled human-ecological systems. European demand for mammal pelts altered life for indigenous North Americans and shifted thousands of years of traditional harvest practices. However, we know very little about the ecological effects of this massive harvest that shaped the structure and function of the North American ecosystems. This project integrates archaeological, historical, and modern data and specimens to study populations of beaver, muskrat, and mink over the past several thousand years. It will use that interdisciplinary data to understand the consequences of mass harvesting, ecosystem change, and the effects of different cultural practices on furbearers. The project’s broader impacts include diversifying participation of individuals that contribute in terms of research, management and policy. The study employs diverse methods and perspectives. The research tools include ancient DNA sequencing, stable isotope analysis, zooarchaeology, morphometrics, and wildlife ecology. By comparing cultures and ecosystems in parallel from Oregon to Maine, the study will assess how different cultural practices have shaped species and ecological outcomes. It will also investigate how those environmental changes shape future decisions, practices, and social dynamics, while characterizing coupled socio-ecological landscapes through time. This will provide a powerful multidimensional model that will facilitate conservation of biodiversity and traditional livelihoods. This model will explore how and why species recover, and what the signatures of recovery look like across different datasets that are not typically aligned and jointly analyzed. This long-term dataset of resilience and recovery will provide valuable and applicable lessons about local furbearer management and the IUCN Green List. This project is jointly funded by the Dynamics of Integrated Socio-Environmental Systems (DISES) program and the Established Program to Stimulate Competitive Research (EPSCoR).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.