DDRIG: Soil-Stratigraphy and Landscape Evolution in Subarctic Lowlands: A Paleoenvironmental Framework for Human Colonization and Occupation of Eastern Beringia

该奖项将支持研究生詹妮弗·基尔霍费尔重建大约14,000年前东贝林吉亚史前景观的研究。Beringia是阿拉斯加和俄罗斯之间的地区，目前被白令海覆盖，但14,000年前是干燥的陆地，在巨大的北美冰盖融化导致海平面上升之前。了解当时的地貌将使我们深入了解在这一时期发生的早期人类迁徙。了解这一点将使科学家和感兴趣的公众更好地了解这些早期移民可以利用哪些资源来获取食物、住所和衣服。穿越这片土地有多难，需要多长时间。为了全面了解当代美洲原住民的祖先是如何迁徙到北美的，回答这些问题是很重要的。这项拟议的研究使用埋藏的土壤作为阿拉斯加中部亚北极低地陆地环境中的景观演变的指示器。这项工作为人类在贝林吉亚东部的殖民提供了一个古环境框架，校准的年代为距今约14,000至8,000年(加州。B.P.)。该项目利用“土壤连锁反应”的方法，在不同的时间和空间尺度上探索过去土壤形成和气候变异性之间的关系。埋藏的土壤通常与阿拉斯加中部早期的考古活动有关，因此了解影响土壤形成和考古记录的环境因素至关重要。许多研究断言，全球范围的千禧年气候变异性与研究区域过去的土壤形成之间存在联系，但最近的研究认为，局部干扰循环可能对土壤形成产生了重大影响。该项目假设更大范围的气候变化和局部干扰循环都影响土壤形成，并旨在开发一个高分辨率的微形态(土壤岩相学)数据集来验证这一假设。主要研究目标是：1)根据研究流域内高程样带过去土壤发育的变化，建立高分辨率的景观演变记录；2)增加陆地古环境记录，并将其与考古数据直接比较；3)评估亚北极低地环境对人类生态和土地利用的潜在环境影响。

This award will support the research of graduate student Jennifer Kielhofer to recreate the prehistoric landscape of eastern Beringia approximately 14,000 years ago. Beringia is the area between Alaska and Russia that is currently covered by the Bering Sea, but 14,000 years ago was dry land, prior to the rise in sealevel that occurred when the massive North American Ice Sheets melted. Understanding what the landscape looked like at this time will give us insights into the early human migrations across this landscape that occurred during this time period. Knowing this will give scientists and interested members of the public a better understanding of what resources were available for these early migrants to exploit for food, shelter, and clothing. How difficult the landscape was to traverse and how long this would take. These are questions important to answer in order to have a full picture of how the ancestors of contemporary Native American peoples migrated to North America. The proposed research uses buried soils as indicators of landscape evolution within lowland terrestrial settings of subarctic central Alaska. This work provides a paleoenvironmental framework for human colonization of eastern Beringia ~14,000 to 8,000 calibrated years before present (cal. B.P.). Using the "soil catena" approach, this project explores the relationship between past soil formation and climatic variability on various temporal and spatial scales. Buried soils are generally associated with early archaeological occupations in central Alaska, so it is critical to understand the environmental factors that influenced soil formation and the archaeological record. Many studies assert a link between global-scale millennial climatic variability and past soil formation in the study region, but more recent research argues that local disturbance cycles may have had a significant impact on soil formation. This project hypothesizes that both broader scale climatic change and local disturbance cycles influenced soil formation, and aims to develop a high-resolution micromorphological (soil petrographic) dataset to test this hypothesis. Major research objectives are to: 1) develop a highresolution record of landscape evolution, based on changes in past soil development across an elevational transect in the study catchment, 2) augment terrestrial paleoenvironmental records and compare them directly to archaeological datasets, and finally, 3) assess potential environmental impacts on human ecology and land use in lowland subarctic settings.