CNH: Collaborative Research: Pre-Contact Intensive Agriculture and Society in Kohala, Hawai'i

农业系统为整合对生态系统和人类社会的基本理解提供了大量机会。 生态系统的特性限制了农业集约化的可能途径，农业生产的性质可以影响人类社会的各个方面。 与此同时，人类社会创造和发展了特定的农业生产系统，有时以戏剧性的方式改变生态系统。 夏威夷群岛为探索生态系统、农业系统和人类社会之间相互作用的性质和后果提供了极好的机会，因为它们在欧洲接触之前的几个世纪里就已经发挥了作用。 这一合作研究项目将侧重于夏威夷科哈拉的集约农业和社会，那里广泛而明确的环境梯度包括一个大的（60平方公里）和长期持续的雨养旱地农业系统，该系统在世纪中期被遗弃。 在当地社区和学校的参与下，将在整个田间系统范围内建立实验花园。 除了农业试验外，这项工作还将利用社区投入（传统知识）、考古观察和生态系统/土壤分析。 一旦到位，这些花园将用于开发基于生理的农业作物模型，并确定农业系统是如何组织和整合的;在欧洲人接触之前，它是如何持续几个世纪的;以及它如何与附近的灌溉系统相互作用。 这最后一项工作将利用科哈拉广阔的环境梯度中多种稳定同位素丰度的巨大差异，在古老和长期废弃的科哈拉田间系统的边界内建立实验花园将有助于实现若干科学和教育目标。 一个经过充分验证的旱地作物模型将能够更详细地计算农业产量;这反过来又将使整个科哈拉地区过去农业生产和人口统计的现有模型更加现实。 同样，对夏威夷农作物的同位素测量将支持对食物和其他物品来源的详细解释，因为这些来源在空间、时间和接触前夏威夷家庭的社会地位上有所不同。 这些努力将使人们能够确定这一系统和其他大型雨水灌溉农业系统如何运作，以及它们如何与附近以灌溉农业为基础的社区相互作用。 因此，该项目将有助于理解复杂社会的演变。 这些花园代表了一种非凡的教育资源，因为它们将朝着恢复夏威夷岛上主要的接触前农业系统的一个例子迈出一步。 学校和社区团体将利用这些花园，在具有文化意义的环境中进行实地实验，学习科学。 该项目得到了NSF竞赛的一个奖项的支持，该奖项侧重于耦合自然和人类系统的动力学。

Agricultural systems offer substantial opportunities to integrate basic understanding of ecosystems and of human societies. Properties of ecosystems constrain the range of possible pathways for agricultural intensification, and the nature of agricultural production can influence aspects of human societies. At the same time, human societies create and develop specific systems of agricultural production that transform ecosystems, sometimes in dramatic ways. The Hawaiian Archipelago offers excellent opportunities to explore the nature and consequences of interactions among ecosystems, agricultural systems, and human societies as they played out over centuries prior to European contact. This collaborative research project will focus on intensive agriculture and society in Kohala, Hawai'i, where broad and well-defined environmental gradients encompass a large (60 km-square) and long-sustained rain-fed dryland agricultural system that was abandoned in the mid-19th century. With participation from local communities and schools, experimental gardens will be established across the range of the field system. This effort will draw on community input (traditional knowledge), archaeological observations, and ecosystem/soil analyses in addition to agricultural experimentation. Once in place, these gardens will be used to develop physiologically based agricultural crop models and to determine how the agricultural system was organized and integrated; how it was sustained for centuries prior to European contact; and how it interacted with nearby irrigated systems. This last effort will make use of strong differences in the abundances of multiple stable isotopes across the broad environmental gradient of Kohala.The establishment of experimental gardens within the boundaries of the ancient and long-abandoned Kohala field system will serve several scientific and educational objectives. A well-validated crop model for dryland crops will allow much more detailed calculations of agricultural yields; these in turn will make existing models of past agricultural production and human demography across the Kohala landscape more realistic. Similarly, isotopic measurements of Hawaiian crops will support detailed interpretations of sources of food and other goods as these varied over space, time, and the social status of households in pre-contact Hawai'i. Together these efforts will make it possible to determine how this and other large, rain-fed agricultural systems functioned and how they interacted with nearby communities based on irrigated agriculture. The project therefore will contribute to understanding the evolution of complex societies. The gardens represent an extraordinary educational resource because they will make a step toward restoring an example of the main pre-contact agricultural system on the island of Hawai'i. School and community groups will make use of these gardens to learn science by conducting field experiments in a culturally meaningful setting. This project is supported by an award resulting from the NSF competition focusing on the Dynamics of Coupled Natural and Human Systems.