Human Response To High Altitude Environmental Change

在快速变化的世界中，了解人类如何在应对气候变化的同时保持粮食安全至关重要。然而，人类对当地环境长期周期性波动的适应性反应却知之甚少。更重要的是了解人类如何应对气候变化，而不是在世界上少数几个最佳地区，而是在数百万小农和牧民的生计受到威胁的关键边缘地点。考古学在回答以下问题方面具有独特的优势：为什么某些类型的系统能够适应气候变化，而其他类型的系统则会崩溃？什么样的策略不仅在短期内，而且在千年内都是适应性的？Alpoim Guedes博士将与同事们一起开展研究，以了解人类如何在过去两千年来一系列重大气候逆转的背景下改变他们的农业和畜牧业战略。通过研究地方层面不同适应策略的潜力，并对人类决策的后果提供长期视角，本研究有可能进一步生产更多样化、更适合当地的食物来源，这些食物来源在面对气候变化时具有弹性。除了为当地大学的学生提供实地考察外，它还为美国少数民族本科生和两名早期职业科学家提供国际实地考察经验。Alpoim Guedes博士和他的同事将在一个关键的边缘地区——中国喜马拉雅山东部的高海拔环境——调查人类是如何应对和适应气候波动的。除了通过分析动植物遗骸重建古代生存模式外，研究人员还将研究不同类型的社会组织如何促进或损害人类的适应能力。项目研究人员将开发模型来预测作物和牧草生产如何受到气候变化的影响。这些模型不仅可以用来预测过去的产量波动，还可以用来预测未来的预测情景。通过概述决定作物和放牧资源如何对气候和生态变量变化作出反应的不同因素之间复杂的相互作用，为该项目创建的模型可以应用于全球其他高海拔/高纬度地区，特别是美国的那些地区。

Understanding how humans have managed to maintain food security while dealing with climatic change is crucial in a rapidly changing world. However, human adaptive responses to periodic fluctuations in local environment over the long term are poorly understood. Even more crucial is understanding how humans responded to climatic change, not in the few optimal areas of the world, but rather in key marginal loci where the livelihoods of millions of smallholder farmers and pastoralists are at stake. Archaeology is uniquely poised to answer questions such as: Why are certain types of system resilient to climate change while others fall apart? What types of strategy are adaptive not just over the short term but for millennia? Along with colleagues, Dr. Alpoim Guedes will carry out research to understand how humans modified their agricultural and pastoral strategies in the context of a series of major climatic reversals over the past two millennia. By examining the potential for different adaptive strategies at the local level and providing a long term perspective on the consequences of human decision making, this research has the potential to further the production of more diverse, and more locally-adapted food sources that are resilient in the face of climate change. In addition to serving as a field school for students from a local university, it provides an international fieldwork experience for US minority undergraduates as well as two early career scientists. Dr. Alpoim Guedes and colleagues will investigate how humans responded to and adapted to climatic fluctuations in one key marginal area: the high altitude environment of Eastern Himalayas of China. In addition to reconstructing ancient subsistence patterns through the analysis of plant and animal remains, the researchers will investigate how different types of social organization facilitated or impaired human adaptation. Project researchers will develop models to predict how crop and forage grass production was impacted by climatic change. Each of these models will be used to predict how production fluctuated not only in the past but also in future predicted scenarios. By outlining the complex interactions between different factors that determine how crops and graze resources react to changes in climatic and ecological variables, the models created for this project can be applied to other high altitude/high latitude areas worldwide, particularly those in the United States.