BLADEN: Biodiversity and the Legacy of Anthropogenic Disturbance on Ecosystems in the Neotropics

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How humans have shaped tropical forest composition and structure, and how biodiversity recovers followinghuman disturbance lacks long-term observations. BLADEN will address this critical knowledge gap bydetermining anthropogenic impacts on biodiversity in a Mesoamerican tropical forest over 13,000 years. Thedestruction of tropical forests and loss of biodiversity is one of the greatest challenges humanity faces,threatening essential ecosystem services, including food security, the provisioning of medicines and theregulation of Earth's climate. Developing datasets to understand how humans shaped ecosystems and howbiodiversity recovers following disturbance is critical for informed conservation strategies and securingglobal futures. Despite extensive evidence of past landscape impacts, processes of natural regeneration inresponse to the type, intensity, and duration of disturbance lack data. BLADEN will fill this knowledge gap.The multidisciplinary 5-year project couples past and modern biodiversity indicators at high spatial andchronological resolution in the Bladen Nature Reserve, southern Belize. The study will assess the influenceof the range of past disturbances associated with the ancient Maya and their forebears to determinecorrelations of past vegetation management with modern forest composition and genomic variation in keytree species. My broad experience and successes leveraging novel proxies of human disturbance in theNeotropics place me in a privileged position to lead this interdisciplinary study. The results of the projectwill reveal insight into how humans have shaped tropical forests and provide critical baseline data on theeffectiveness of natural regeneration to restore biodiversity in response to the range of human disturbances.