US-Ethiopia Planning Visit: An Interdisciplinary Approach to Understanding Late Holocene Human-Environment Relationships in Aksum, N. Ethiopia

该规划访问奖将支持波士顿大学的Magaly Koch博士和Michael DiBlasi博士与埃塞俄比亚地质调查局的Mulugeta Haile Mariam、Mekelle大学的Jan Nyssen和意大利那不勒斯东方大学的Rudolfo Fattovich合作开发一个项目，重建埃塞俄比亚北部阿克苏米特帝国核心区的环境历史和景观生态。在公元前800年至公元900年期间，埃塞俄比亚的提格雷地区出现了强大的酋长、王国和一个幅员辽阔的领土国家阿克苏姆。从大约公元100年到公元650年(阿克苏姆的主要发展时期)，提格雷的环境支持了复杂的城市文化和密集的地区人口。然而，今天，提格雷被认为是埃塞俄比亚环境退化最严重的地区之一，容易发生严重的侵蚀、干旱和饥荒。几千年来的人类土地利用活动在多大程度上对该区域的环境变化起到了作用仍未得到回答。这次规划访问将用于开发一个更大的项目，该项目使用地貌学、沉积学和考古学的证据来确定环境和文化因素如何影响全新世晚期提格雷北部的景观变化，以及这些变化如何影响人类活动和文化发展。这些知识将有助于了解世界各地可能发生的某些土地利用模式的长期影响，以及提格雷高地当前的环境问题和缓解这些问题的策略。与迈凯勒大学(提格雷)和埃塞俄比亚地质调查局的合作将与埃塞俄比亚科学家建立新的联系，为每个机构的研究生和专业人员提供实地和实验室培训，并通过参与海外合作研究为美国学生提供国际经验。该奖项由美国国家科学基金会的地理和区域科学项目共同资助。

This planning visit award will support Dr. Magaly Koch and Dr. Michael DiBlasi of Boston University to develop, with collaborators Mulugeta Haile Mariam of the Geological Survey of Ethiopia, Jan Nyssen of Mekelle University, and Rudolfo Fattovich of the Orientale University of Naples, Italy, a project to reconstruct the environmental history and landscape ecology of the core area of the Aksumite Empire in northern Ethiopia. During the period 800 BC to AD 900, powerful chiefdoms, kingdoms, and an expansive, territorial state - Aksum - arose in the Tigray region of Ethiopia. From ca. AD 100 to 650 (the major period of Aksum's growth) the environment of Tigray supported a sophisticated urban culture with a dense regional population. Today, however, Tigray is considered one of Ethiopia's most environmentally degraded regions, and is prone to severe erosion, droughts, and famine. The extent to which millennia of human land use activities played a role in environmental change in this region remains largely unanswered. The planning visit will be used to develop a larger project that uses evidence from geomorphology, sedimentology, and archaeology to determine how environmental and cultural factors influenced landscape transformations in northern Tigray during the late Holocene and how those transformations influenced human activities and cultural development. This knowledge will aid in understanding both the long-term impact of certain land use patterns that might occur across the world, as well as the current environmental problems and strategies to mitigate them in the highlands of Tigray.Collaboration with the University of Mekelle (Tigray) and the Geological Survey of Ethiopia will develop new linkages with Ethiopian scientists, provide field and laboratory training for graduate students and professionals from each institution, and give U.S. students international experience by participating in collaborative research abroad. This award is co-funded by NSF's Geography and Regional Science Program.