Doctoral Dissertation Research: Did Native Americans Fundamentally Alter Western Forest Structure? A Reconstruction of Vegetation and Fire History from Northwestern California

对于美国西部森林中历史上美洲原住民骚乱的规模和程度，存在着广泛的分歧。从那些主张将影响限制在永久村庄和营地附近的人，到那些认为美洲原住民通过使用火受到广泛影响的人，以及现代管理实践在制定土地使用政策时需要承认这种影响的人，都有一个连续不断的过程。这场辩论是区分人类在影响美国西部森林结构中可能扮演的角色的核心问题。不同学科的科学家的不同解释导致缺乏针对这一重要问题的多学科研究。在内华达大学斯科特·明辛博士的指导下，博士生杰弗里·克劳福德将使用古生态学和人类学的方法，研究加利福尼亚州西北部两个低海拔湖泊遗址的火灾和植被变化记录，这两个湖泊具有美洲原住民土地使用的历史。之所以选择这些湖泊，是因为它们靠近有充分记录的美洲原住民长期居住地，如果当地居民操纵了大片森林，它们应该会提供明确的证据。这项分析将利用多种方法，包括花粉和木炭分析、树轮分析、民族志研究和考古研究。从每个地点收集的湖泊沉积物将被分析花粉和木炭，以提供每个湖盆的火灾和植被动态的高分辨率记录。每个盆地的火灾历史将使用树木年轮的火痕分析来构建。火痕结果将与来自湖泊沉积物的木炭结果进行比较，以校准已知火灾记录的木炭丰度，以便重建长期的火灾历史。然后将任何异常的植被或火模式与区域气候学、人类学和考古学记录进行比较，以确定美洲原住民迁移模式或技术变化可能如何影响景观火和植被模式。这项研究的结果将开始填补关于西部森林中美洲原住民土地利用强度和规模的知识空白。结果将直接适用于加利福尼亚州西北部的森林，但通过明确衡量美洲原住民对西部森林的影响以及他们可能对当地规模以外的景观造成的影响程度，将广泛适用于整个西部的森林。这些结果可以对在欧洲-美洲人定居之前影响森林的更广泛的条件进行概念化，并有助于指导今后的森林管理决定。

Broad disagreement exists regarding the scale and degree of historic Native American disturbance in the western forests of the United States. There is a continuum from those who argue for minimal impacts restricted to the immediate vicinity of permanent villages and camps, to those who argue that Native American influences, through the use of fire, were widespread and that modern management practices need to acknowledge this influence when formulating land use policies. This debate is a central issue in distinguishing the role humans may have had in influencing forest structure in the western United States. Differing interpretations from scientists in different disciplines have led to a lack of multidisciplinary studies directed at answering this important issue. Doctoral student Jeffery Crawford, under the supervision of Dr. Scott Mensing at the University of Nevada, Reno will use methods from both paleoecology and anthropology to examine the record of fire and vegetation change at two low-elevation lake sites in northwestern California that have a history of Native American land-use. These lakes were selected because they are near well-documented sites of long-term Native American habitation and should provide clear evidence if local populations were manipulating large areas of forest. This analysis will utilize multiple methods, including pollen and charcoal analysis, tree-ring analysis, ethnographic studies, and archaeological studies. Lake sediments collected from each site will be analyzed for pollen and charcoal in order to provide a high-resolution record of the fire and vegetation dynamics of each lake basin. A fire history of each basin will be constructed using fire scar analysis of tree-rings. The fire-scar results will be compared with charcoal results from lake sediments to calibrate charcoal abundance to a known fire record in order to reconstruct a long term fire history. Any anomalous vegetation or fire patterns will then be compared to the regional climatological, anthropological and archaeological records in order to determine how Native American migration patterns or technological changes may have influenced landscape fire and vegetation patterns.The results of this study will begin to fill the knowledge gap regarding the intensity and scale of Native American land-use in western forests. The results will be directly applicable to Northwestern California forests, but will be broadly applicable to forests throughout the west by explicitly measuring the impacts of Native Americans on western forests and the extent to which they may have impacted landscapes beyond the local scale. These results can play a transformative role in conceptualizing a wider range of conditions that influenced forests prior to Euro-American settlement and help to guide future forest management decisions.