Long-Term Nature Reserve Human Interaction

在世界范围内，国家公园通常被描述为“原始自然”，没有被人类接触过。因此，保护项目试图通过土地管理项目和重新安置以国家公园为家的人们，将人类对景观的影响降到最低。其中一个这样的国家公园位于地球上生物多样性最丰富的地区之一。由于认为人类可能对这种生物多样性产生了负面影响，长期居民的生计已经发生了重大变化。他们被禁止从事农耕、放牧、采伐木柴或建造房屋，也不再被允许打猎。作为国家保护计划的一部分，他们曾经居住的梯田正在被积极地重新造林。此外，他们的传统居住地正从高海拔的梯田转移到谷底：这一过程可能会使公园居民面临山体滑坡等地貌灾害。然而，考古证据表明，人们对环境产生负面影响的担忧可能是错误的，并表明人类已经在这片土地上居住了数千年。一个跨学科团队在一个关键地点进行挖掘，并利用考古学、动物学、地貌学和同位素证据来回答人类是如何管理森林、种植作物、管理动物和管理长期侵蚀过程的。随着山谷原有社区成员的重新安置，与如何管理景观、植物和动物有关的传统知识正在受到侵蚀。然而，这些社区资源对地方身份至关重要。在实地工作期间，与当地的项目人员合作，共同产生结果，并用当地语言记录关键动植物和技术的术语和使用；为语言保护和主权做出贡献。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。

Around the world, National Parks have often been characterized as "pristine nature" that has been untouched by humans. As a result, conservation programs have sought to minimize human impact on the landscape through land management programs and resettlement of people who called national parks home. One such national park is located in one of the most biodiverse regions on earth. In the belief that humans may be negatively impacting this biodiversity, the livelihoods of long-term residents have been significantly altered. They have been discouraged from carrying out farming, herding animals, gathering wood for fire or building houses and are also no longer allowed to hunt. The terraces on which they once lived are being actively reforested as part of a national conservation program. In addition, the location of their traditional settlements are being shifted from high altitude terraces to valley bottoms: a process that may expose the parks inhabitants to geomorphological hazards such as landslides. However, archaeological evidence suggests that the concern that people are negatively impacting the environment may be misplaced and shows that people have occupied this landscape for thousands of years. An interdisciplinary team conducts excavations and employs archaeobotanical, zooarchaeological, geomorphological and isotopic evidence at a key site to answer how humans managed forests, planted crops, managed their animals and managed erosional processes over deep time. As the original community members of the valley are being resettled, traditional knowledge associated with how landscapes, plants and animals were managed is being eroded. These community resources are, however, critically important to local identity. Project personnel who are native to the region are being partnered with during fieldwork to co-produce results and to record terms and uses of key plants/animals and technologies in local languages; contributing to language preservation and sovereignty.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.