RUI: Documenting Ojibwe Land Use Through Tree-Ring Analysis of Culturally Modified Trees in the Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness

摘要本研究项目将提供有关前欧洲殖民土地利用对生态影响的新知识，以及这些遗产对保护区管理的重要意义。研究人员将促进对人类与自然环境之间复杂相互作用的理解，以了解过去和未来跨多个尺度的生物地理格局。项目成果在确定低密度土地使用的生态遗产和确定生态恢复的参考条件和基线数据方面将是有价值的。该项目将为在主要本科院校就读的本科生提供宝贵的教育和培训机会，并将促进早期职业科学教育工作者的专业发展。调查人员将积极与美洲土著部落资源管理人员合作，并将开展外联活动，与土地资源管理界和一般公众分享成果。加强对过去几千年人类对火灾影响程度的认识，对于理解和管理美国和世界各地适应火灾的植被群落具有重要意义。去皮松树可以提供一个令人信服的土地使用背景，为解释广泛和不断增长的火灾历史和森林年龄结构提供信息。研究人员将使用树木年代学对边界水域独木舟地区荒野地区树木的剥落痕迹进行年代测定，以提供第一个绝对有年代的、空间上精确的大湖地区Ojibwe土地使用记录。将进行参数和非参数测试，以比较火灾频率、火灾同步性和高火灾频率区域与剥皮疤痕发生的空间关联，以确定人类与火灾活动之间的关系。与考古学家的合作将为树木年轮数据提供文化背景，并将使人们能够直接检查人们对这一荒野地区的火灾制度和植被群落的影响。这项工作的结果将建立对人类在欧洲前景观中的作用的新认识，这将有助于指导未来在大湖区和世界整个温带森林地区的研究和管理。

NATIONAL SCIENCE FOUNDATIONGEOGRAPHY SPATIAL SCIENCES (GSS) PROGRAMABSTRACTThis research project will provide new knowledge regarding the ecological impacts of pre-European settlement land use and the critical importance of these legacies for the management of protected areas. The investigators will advance understanding about the complex interplay between people and the natural environment for understanding past and future biogeographical patterns across multiple scales. Project outcomes will be valuable in identifying the ecological legacies of low-intensity land use and for identifying reference conditions and baseline data for ecological restoration. The project will provide valuable education and training opportunities for undergraduate students enrolled at a primarily undergraduate institution and will foster professional development of early career science educators. The investigators will actively collaborate with Native American tribal resource managers and will conduct outreach activities for sharing outcomes with land-resource management communities and the general public.Enhancing knowledge about the extent of human influence on fire regimes of past millennia has important implications for the understanding and management of fire-adapted vegetation communities in the U.S. and around the world. Bark-peeled pine can provide a compelling context of land use to inform interpretations of an extensive and growing fire history and forest age structure. The investigator will use dendrochronological dating of peel scars on trees in the Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness to provide the first absolutely dated and spatially precise record of Ojibwe land use in the Great Lakes region. Parametric and non-parametric tests will be performed to compare fire frequency, fire synchrony, and spatial association of areas of high fire frequency with peel-scar occurrence in order to ascertain the association between human and fire activity. Collaboration with archaeologists will provide the cultural context for the tree-ring data and will enable a direct examination of the influence people had on the fire regimes and vegetation communities of this wilderness area. The results of this work will establish a new understanding of the role of people in the pre-European landscape that will help guide future research and management in the Great Lakes Region and throughout temperate forest regions of the world.