Long-term human environmental impacts in a cross-scale context across the Pacific Coast of North America

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Understanding current and future forest ecosystems requires detailed knowledge of long-term human environmental impacts. These long-term human environmental impacts are rarely considered when evaluating seemingly wild' or pristine' landscapes. However, failing to consider the influence of people may greatly under or over-estimate the resilience of these systems. The overall objective of my research program is to quantify and challenge held paradigms of humans being associated with degraded landscapes. More specifically, in the next five years I will: a) generate a time series of when human influence was removed from habitation sites (places where people lived resulting in the accumulation of a physical-material record); b) quantify the spatial extent and persistence of long-term human environmental impacts and their effect on forest composition and productivity; c) predict the future forest composition and productivity growing on habitation sites; and d) quantify carbon dynamics across the Northwestern coast of North America by determining the amount of nutrient subsidies moved into the terrestrial environment, the anthropogenic fire history, and the associated changes in forest productivity. This research will continue developing strong partnerships with Indigenous and non-Indigenous communities in the traditional territories of the Heiltsuk and Wuikinuxv First Nations that are critical to the success of this work. This work is of great significance to the field of evolution and ecology, as it is challenging existing community ecology paradigms about the role that humans play in driving patterns of forest productivity by mediating marine nutrient subsidies into terrestrial environments. This notion of long-term human settlement being detrimental to the landscape is entrenched in our thinking about issues of sustainability and environmental issues. This works challenges that notion. These results will contribute important information for the Coastal First Nations with a detailed time series of when habitation sites were abandoned and provide data on the future composition of productivity of these forests. The impact of my team's research will be enhanced by increasing Indigenous engagement, especially with youth, throughout the data collection and outreach stages.