Pre-Columbian Human Modifications of Terra Firme and Fluvial Forest in Western Amazonia: Terrestrial Soil Phytolith and Charcoal Records

史密森尼学会的多洛雷斯·科洛诺博士将探索哥伦布发现美洲大陆前人类对热带环境的改造。亚马逊河流域位于南美洲热带地区的中心，从大西洋一直延伸到安第斯山脉，面积大约相当于美国大陆。目前，它是美国最大的热带森林的所在地，它包含了新世界土著文化和生物多样性的大部分遗迹。许多研究表明，这种多样性是古老的，其物种丰富的森林是数千万年前，其本土文化可以追溯到15，000年前人类首次进入美洲。因此，了解亚马逊森林过去的自然和人为变化模式如何影响其生物学和文化，包括现在，对环境历史学家，考古学家，气候建模者和保护生物学家都具有相当重要的意义。例如，各组织越来越多地依靠这些信息来制定良好的政策，包括更好地了解物种在面临重大干扰时的复原力。通过这项研究，研究人员将通过分析和测定他们从当今森林直接下方取样的植物化石，重建亚马逊河流域五个不同地区的植被和火灾历史。研究人员将提供文化和自然对过去和现代森林影响的敏感指数。该项目将对从偏远、以前未研究过的地区和亚马逊西部地区取样的陆地土壤进行植硅体和木炭分析，这些地区假设人类的影响比其他地区要小。本研究中所解决的问题引起了人们的高度兴趣，并与来自不同学术学科的重要问题保持一致，这些学科的重点是人类/环境与现在和未来亚马逊及其过去的关系。如果了解环境历史，保护，可持续性和重新造林计划将更加成功，这些计划对于寻求充分利用自然资源的现代土著社会也非常重要。气候模拟和预报人员需要更多关于史前活动对过去大气影响的信息，以便他们能够更好地模拟现在和未来大气条件与热带/全球环境变化之间的联系。该奖项反映了NSF的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的知识价值和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估，被认为值得支持。

Dr. Dolores Piperno of the Smithsonian Institution will explore pre-Columbian human modifications of tropical environments. The Amazon Basin located in the heart of tropical South America and stretching from the Atlantic ocean to the Andes is an area approximately the size of the continental United States. It is presently home to the largest contiguous expanse of American tropical forest and it contains much of what remains of the New World's indigenous cultural and biological diversity. Numerous studies show how this diversity is ancient, its species-rich forests being tens of millions of years ago and its native cultures dating to first human entrance of the Americas 15,000 years ago. Understanding how past patterns of natural- and human-caused alterations of the Amazonian forest affected its biology and cultures, including still in the present time, is therefore of considerable importance to environmental historians, archaeologists, climate modelers, and conservation biologists alike. For example, organizations increasingly rely on such information to formulate good policies, including by better understanding species resilience in the face of significant disturbance. With this research, the researchers will undertake reconstructions of vegetation and fire history across five different regions of Amazonia through analysis and dating of plant fossils that they have sampled from directly underneath present-day forests. The researchers will provide sensitive indices of both cultural and natural influences on past and modern forest. This project will carry out phytolith and charcoal analyses on terrestrial soils sampled from remote, previously unstudied regions and areas of western Amazonia where they have hypothesized human impacts were less significant than in other regions. The problems addressed in this research are of high interest to, and align with important questions from diverse scholarly disciplines focused on human/environmental relationships with the present and future Amazon as well as its past. Conservation, sustainability, and reforestation programs are more successful if environmental histories are understood, and these programs are also extremely important to modern indigenous societies who seek to utilize well their natural resources. Climate modelers and forecasters require more information about the effects of prehistoric activities on past atmospheres, so that they can better model the links between present and future atmospheric conditions and tropical/global environmental change.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.