Collaborative Research: Human-Environment Interactions in the Bolivian Altiplano: Climate, Limnology and Tiwanaku Agroecosystems

这项拟议的研究结合了考古学和古生态学的研究，以检验前西班牙裔安第斯州蒂瓦纳库产生广泛的土地利用变化的机制，这种变化改变了当地的生态系统，从而使可再生资源生产，特别是农业和可能的渔业，持续了近千年。的的喀喀湖附近研究区人类与环境相互作用的变化问题集中在五个研究目标上：描述过去5000年（人类活动的主要时期）湖泊水位的变化；2. 利用湖泊水位变化作为水和能量收支（气候）模型的输入，并利用稳定氧和碳同位素的地层变化来测量该地区的水文平衡，分析高原全新世的气候变化；3. 通过地形测绘、系统试验挖掘和探地雷达等手段重建研究区农田农业时空动态；4. 利用地理信息系统（GIS）技术，在关于高地水文和气候控制的明确假设的背景下，建立农业时空系统模型；和5。确定不同耕作方式下侵蚀沉积过程和土壤养分流失的变化。这项研究的结果可能对理解恶劣环境中资源可持续性的生态和组织基础具有广泛的意义。这种对至少两种不同的农业实践的不同营养保持能力的长期看法，即高地（在整个热带地区被淹没的地区都有）和传统旱地，可能对农学和农业生态学有用。最后，对全球气候变化的研究可能会受益于对过去几千年的的的喀喀湖盆地的更精细的描绘，以及从古生态记录中分离人类活动影响与自然气候变化的尝试。

The proposed study integrates archaeological and paleoecological research to examine the mechanisms through which the pre-Hispanic Andean state of Tiwanaku generated extensive land-use changes that altered local ecosystems in such a way that renewable resource production, particularly agriculture and possibly fisheries, was sustained for nearly a millennium. Five research objectives converge on the issue of changing human environment interactions in the study area adjacent to Lake Titicaca: 1. to describe lake-level variation during the past 5000 years, the major period of human occupation; 2. to analyze Holocene climate variation in the altiplano both by using lake- level variation as input to water- and energy-budget (climatinomy) models, and by using stratigraphic variations of stable oxygen and carbon isotopes to measure the region's hydrological balance; 3. to reconstruct the spatial and temporal dynamics of raised-field agriculture in the study area by topographic mapping, systematic test excavations and ground penetrating radar; 4. to model agricultural space-time systematics in the context of explicit hypotheses regarding hydrological and climatic control of raised fields with Geographic Information Systems (GIS) techniques; and 5. to determine changes of erosion and deposition processes and soil nutrient loss coincident with distinct types of farming practices. The results of this research may hold broad implications for understanding the ecological and organizational bases of resource sustainability in harsh environments. This long-term view of different nutrient-retaining capacities of at least two different kinds of agricultural practices, raised fields (which are found throughout the tropics in inundated areas) and traditional dry-farmed fields may be useful in agronomy and agroecology. Finally, studies of global climate change may benefit form a finer-scaled picture of the past several thousand years in the Lake Titicaca basin, as well as from the attempt to separate, in the paleoecological record, effects of human activities from natural climatic variation.