TerraSAgE: Terraces as Sustainable Agricultural Environments

在世界各地，梯田景观已经被创造出来，以生产多样化的作物，改善土壤和管理水资源——从历史上看，它们在许多地区对旱地农业至关重要。尽管这种现象普遍存在，但农业梯田的历史仍然知之甚少，这主要是由于它们的建造、改造和使用的年代存在问题。对梯田历史的不理解阻碍了对景观历史的更广泛研究，限制了对定居点如何在更广泛的景观中运作以及梯田如何反映农村社区做出的长期投资选择的了解。项目团队成员开发的一种测定土壤剖面年代的新技术最近显示出独特的潜力，可以揭示阶地的形成和发展（Kinnaird et al. 2017）。这些方法与地质考古技术（包括化学和微观形态分析以及更广泛的景观调查）同时应用，为彻底改变对过去梯田系统及其景观的理解提供了机会，并揭示和评估支撑其建设、演变和废弃的社会、经济和环境策略。我们的项目将回答关于梯田历史的四个关键领域的研究问题：在不同的时期和地区，梯田是何时以及如何建造、维护和管理的？梯田的形成原因是什么？为什么梯田有时会被废弃？-梯田是否已被证明是农村社区在环境上可持续的土地使用策略？-梯田是否增强了对经济或生态不稳定的抵御能力？它们是否有助于减轻过去气候变化的影响？TerraSAgE旨在揭示过去景观的知识，并利用它来模拟变化情景，从而为未来土地管理的可持续战略提供信息。梯田为理解土地利用的长期环境影响和评估农业实践和政策的长期可持续性提供了一个独特的案例。例如，研究已经证明了欧盟共同农业政策是如何在地中海地区带来更集约的农业、机械化和新的梯田技术的，包括土地平整、引进葡萄藤和杏仁等新作物，以及不太稳定的、被推平的“长凳”梯田。这种从20世纪前“传统”梯田的转变对环境造成了重大影响，造成了广泛的侵蚀，影响了土壤健康和排水。更好地了解农业转型的历史时期对土地的影响，对于提供更好的信息至关重要，这些信息可为未来的可持续土地利用提供基础，并为未来的复原力制定明智的政策，特别是在粮食需求不断增加和气候不稳定的情况下。这种需求不仅限于欧洲，而且可以在世界各地找到。TerraSAgE的研究虽然是在欧洲进行的，但对全球的梯田保护和管理具有重要意义。从这个意义上说，该项目将有助于实现联合国可持续发展目标（例如目标2“零饥饿”和目标15“陆地生命”，这两个目标都涉及陆地生态系统的可持续利用）。由于TerraSAgE的方法将研究土壤、水和管理等环境问题与文化遗产问题之间的关系，该项目还将有助于实施《欧洲景观公约》（该公约已由项目开展的所有国家签署和批准），该公约对景观的革命性定义强调了自然和文化方面的不可分割性。

Across the world terraced landscapes have been created to produce diverse crops, to improve soils and to manage water resources - historically, they have been critical in many areas for dry-land agriculture. Despite this widespread occurrence, the history of agricultural terraces has remained poorly understood, largely due to problems in dating their construction, modification and use. This failure to understand the history of terraces has hampered broader research on the histories of landscapes, limiting knowledge of how settlements operated within their wider landscapes and of how terraces reflect the long-term investment choices made by rural communities. A new technique for dating soil profiles developed by members of the project team has recently demonstrated unique potential to unravel the formation and development of terraces through time (Kinnaird et al. 2017). Applied in parallel with geoarchaeological techniques, including chemical and micromorphological analysis, and broader landscape survey, these methods presents an opportunity to revolutionise understanding of past terrace systems and their landscapes - and to reveal and evaluate the societal, economic and environmental strategies that underpinned their construction, evolution and abandonment. Our project will answer research questions in four key areas about the history of terraces:- When and how were terraces constructed, maintained and managed in different periods and regions?- What were the triggers for terracing, and why were they sometimes abandoned?- Has terracing proved an environmentally sustainable land-use strategy for rural communities?- Did terraces enable greater resilience to economic or ecological instability, and did they help mitigate the impacts of past climate change?TerraSAgE is geared towards uncovering knowledge of past landscapes and using it to model scenarios of change and thereby inform sustainable strategies for the future of land-management. Terraces provide a unique case for understanding long-term environmental impacts of land-use and evaluating long-term sustainability in agricultural practice and policy. For example, studies have demonstrated how the EU Common Agricultural Policy led to more intensive farming, mechanisation and new terracing techniques in the Mediterranean, including land-levelling, the introduction of new crops like vines and almonds, and less stable, bulldozed 'bench' terraces. This shift from pre-20th century 'traditional' terracing had major environmental consequences, causing widespread erosion and impacting soil health and drainage. Better understanding of how historic periods of transformation in farming impacted the land are essential to provide better information with which to underpin future sustainable land-use and create informed policies for future resilience, particularly in the face of increasing demand for food and climatic instability. Such needs are not limited to Europe and can be identified around the world. TerraSAgE's research, though conducted in Europe, will have relevance for global terrace conservation and management. In this sense, the project will contribute to progress towards the UN Sustainable Development Goals (for example Goal 2 'Zero Hunger' and Goal 15 'Life on Land', which are both concerned with the sustainable use of terrestrial ecosystems). Because the approach of TerraSAgE will examine the relationships between environmental concerns about soil, water and management and cultural heritage issues, the project will also contribute towards the implementation of the European Landscape Convention (which has been signed and ratified by all the countries where the project will work), whose revolutionary definition of landscape emphasises the indivisibility of its natural and cultural aspects.