Doctoral Dissertation Improvement Award: Employing Remote Sensing Techniques to Examine Land Use Change

在这篇博士论文改进基金中，新墨西哥大学的Jennie Sturm女士将利用一个史前例子来研究经济土地使用影响生活在干旱环境中的社区社会复杂性上升的过程。当地社区设计景观以促进农业、水资源管理和其他经济活动的程度，而不是他们依赖外部参与的程度，往往是该社区在其环境中取得成功的衡量标准，也是达到不同社会复杂性水平的潜在因素。考古学专注于过去土地改造的实物遗迹，非常适合提供关于过去社会及其管理土地利用战略的视角。这对今天的美国尤其重要，因为人们越来越意识到土地修改对环境的长期影响。从这类研究中收集的信息与当代沙漠城市面临的许多问题直接相关，包括农业管理、用水和城市规划。在这个项目中，研究人员将识别和比较干旱环境中的土地修改模式，并评估如何利用这些模式来推断更广泛的土地利用系统。这项研究将在新墨西哥州的查科文化国家历史公园(CCNHP)进行，也被称为查科峡谷。查科峡谷是史前美国西南部最大和最复杂的社会之一的所在地，因此包含了关于经济土地利用如何促进其崛起的关键信息。研究人员将使用遥感方法，包括探地雷达和航空摄影，记录查科的土地利用模式。记录的土地利用模式将允许对土地利用的变化进行严格评估，复制土地修改，以及遵守或拒绝更广泛的经济土地管理制度。考古遥感在绘制土地利用模式方面特别有效，包括那些埋在地表下的土地利用模式，以高效、非破坏性的方式，并坚持国家公园的保护使命。这项研究的结果将提供给CCNHP，作为公众宣传和解释的一部分，并将有助于公园作为其文化资源的管理工具。Jennie Sturm与数据收集同时举办的培训讲习班还将使学生获得遥感技术的实践经验，这些技术正在迅速影响多个行业。

In this Doctoral Dissertation Improvement grant, Ms. Jennie Sturm of the University of New Mexico will utilize a prehistoric example to examine the processes by which economic land use affected the rise in social complexity of a community living in an arid environment. The degree to which local communities engineer their landscapes to facilitate agriculture, water management, and other economic activities, versus the degree to which they depend on outside involvement, is often a measure of that community's success in their environment and an underlying factor in reaching different levels of social complexity. By focusing on the physical remnants of past land modification, archaeology is well-suited to provide perspective on past societies and their strategies for managing land use. This is especially important for the present day United States because of the increasing awareness of the long-term environmental impacts from land modification. Information gathered from studies such as this one is directly relevant for many issues facing contemporary desert cities, including agricultural management, water usage, and urban planning. For this project, researchers will identify and compare patterns of land modification in an arid environment and evaluate how such patterns can be used to infer a broader system of land use. This research will take place in Chaco Culture National Historical Park (CCNHP), also known as Chaco Canyon, in New Mexico. Chaco Canyon was the location of one of the largest and most socially complex societies in the prehistoric American Southwest, and thus contains crucial information on how economic land use contributed to its rise. The researchers will use remote sensing methods, including ground-penetrating radar and aerial photography, to document land use patterns within Chaco. The land use patterns documented will allow rigorous evaluation of changes in land use, replication of land modifications, and adherence to or rejection of a broader system of economic land management. Archaeological remote sensing is particularly effective in mapping land use patterns, including those that are buried below the surface, in ways that are efficient, non-destructive, and adhere to the National Park's mission of preservation. The results of this research will be provided to CCNHP to include as part of public outreach and interpretation, and will be useful to the park as a management tool for their cultural resources. Training workshops conducted by Jennie Sturm in concurrence with data collection will also allow students to gain hands-on experience with remote sensing techniques that are rapidly affecting multiple industries.