Mosslands in early modern Lancashire, carbon, community and conservation, 1500/1800

这个博士项目是对1500年至1800年间英格兰西北部苔藓景观历史衰落的探索。我专注于三个核心主题：能源转型和工业革命，泥炭作为一种脆弱的公共资源的管理，最后是一个不断变化的mosquito环境景观的历史特征。与兰开夏郡野生动物信托基金会的合作将使该项目能够做出两个进一步的贡献：让当地社区了解其环境的历史，并提供历史证据，为重新引入当地灭绝的物种提供信息。泥炭沼泽是四种不同类型的湿地之一，其特征是酸性富碳泥炭的积累。当植物物质的腐烂被阻止时，泥炭就形成了，例如在被水淹没的土壤中缺氧。从植物物质中继承的碳储存使得泥炭可以作为一种缓慢燃烧的燃料，这是苔藓群落数千年来一直利用的一个特征。荷兰早期的工业转型是由泥炭作为燃料来源“启动”的，泥炭可能在英格兰西北部的原始工业经济中发挥了重要作用。该项目将探讨这种泥炭开采是否构成了前现代农村工业和19世纪更容易识别的煤动力工业之间的化石燃料连续性。西北部的大部分清真寺由当地人共同拥有。这些“平民”对未封闭的公共土地行使有限但受法律和传统保护的权利。正如蒂内·德摩尔和其他人所指出的那样，管理机构致力于保护公共土地及其依赖者免受市场压力的影响。这种做法最近被定性为“可持续”，本项目将调查兰开夏郡相对贫瘠的苔藓土地上的共同资源管理的可持续性。此外，该项目还将探讨围封沼泽地对资源管理的影响及其社会和经济后果。这个博士项目的最终目的是促进对前现代人类引起的环境变化的理解。虽然人类引起的（或“环境变化”）环境变化通常被认为是一种现代现象，但只要有人类，人类就一直在改变环境。事实上，一些湿地可能是英格兰北部晚期采集文化创造的人工空地的结果。撰写苔藓的社会和经济历史将使兰开夏郡野生动物信托基金会能够让当地社区参与到人类规模的环境变化故事中。在此过程中，该项目将为旨在提高对苔藓景观重要性和价值的认识的保护工作提供投入。此外，国际自然保护联盟的准则要求重新引入方案提供重新引入物种的历史优先性证据。通过绘制早期现代公地的生态图，该项目将为重新引入当地灭绝的物种提供信息。与信托基金会的聊天苔藓项目官员的合作将使历史上的苔藓证据与现代对苔藓生态学的理解相结合。

This PhD project is an exploration of the historical decline of mossland landscapes in the north-west of England between 1500 and 1800. I focus on three core themes; energy transformations and the industrial revolution, the management of peat as a fragile common-pool resource, and finally the historic characters of a changing mossland environment landscape. Collaboration with the Lancashire Wildlife Trust will enable this project to make two further contributions; engaging local communities with the history of their environment, and providing historical evidence to inform the reintroduction of locally extinct species. Peat bogs are one of four distinct types of wetland and are characterised by an accumulation of acidic, carbon-rich peat. Peat forms when the decay of plant matter is arrested, for instance by a lack of oxygen in waterlogged soil. The stored carbon inherited from the plant matter makes peat useful as a slow-burning fuel, a feature that mossland communities have taken advantage of for thousands of years. Earlier industrial transformations in the Netherlands had been 'kick-started' by peat as a fuel source, and it is possible that peat played a significant role in the proto-industrial economy of the north-west of England. This project will explore whether such peat exploitation constituted a fossil-fuelled continuity between pre-modern rural industry and the more recognisable, coal-powered industry of the nineteenth-century. Much of the mossland of the North West was held in common by the locals. These 'commoners' exercised limited but legally and traditionally protected rights over the unenclosed common land. This common land was protected by governing bodies, which as Tine de Moor and others have argued, worked to protect it and its dependents from the pressures of the market. Such practices have been recently characterised as 'sustainable', and this project will investigate the sustainability of common resource management on the relatively infertile mosslands of Lancashire. Furthermore, the project will explore the impact of the enclosure of the mossland on resource management, and its social and economic consequences. The final aim of this PhD project is to contribute to the understanding of pre-modern human-caused environmental change. Although human-caused (or 'anthropogenic') environmental change is often thought of as a modern phenomenon, humans have been altering their environment for as long as there have been humans. Indeed, some wetlands may be the result of artificial clearings created by late gatherer cultures in the north of England. Writing the social and economic history of the moss will enable the Lancashire Wildlife Trust to engage the local community with stories of environmental change at a human scale. In doing so, this project will feed into conservation efforts aimed at raising awareness of the importance and value of mossland landscapes. Furthermore, International Union for Conservation of Nature guidelines require reintroduction programmes to provide evidence of the historical precedence of reintroduced species. By charting the ecology of the early modern commons, this project will inform the reintroduction of locally extinct species. Collaboration with the Trust's Chat Moss Project Officer will allow the evidence of the historical mossland to be inflected with modern understandings of mossland ecologies.