EAGER: Using Historic Art to Explore Legacies and Lost Function in Eastern Us Forests

了解过去的森林有助于了解当前的森林生态系统及其未来可能发生的变化。然而，在许多森林中，历史资料有限，难以评估物种丧失对森林生态系统结构和功能的影响。历史风景画可能是有关过去的宝贵信息来源，因为它们呈现的彩色图像早于摄影。这些图片可能提供一种方法来探索过去的森林结构变化，与目前的森林生产力和生态系统功能的模式。然而，这些图像在历史生态学中的使用受到图像有效性问题的阻碍：这些绘画中描绘的图像有多准确？一幅图像中有多少是艺术家对场景的操纵，以最好地说明一个信息，寓言或浪漫化的自然观？拟议的跨学科项目使用人文和生态科学的工具和知识来解决这些问题。主要目的是评估如何挖掘森林绘画由19世纪的美国艺术家作为一个潜在的数据集的历史生态学。这个项目也代表了一个罕见的深度融合的方法从科学和人文，并有可能作为一个模式，如何跨越学科界限可能有很高的社会价值。这个项目结合了艺术学者的专业知识（谁知道如何和为什么19世纪的景观图像创建）与科学家的专业知识（谁知道森林生态系统的结构和功能）。研究将集中在图像和森林在美国东北部从十九世纪。这是一个森林景观迅速转变的时代，在此期间，风景画的流行-特别是所谓的哈德逊河流学校-同时爆炸。 随着历史上和正在进行的土地利用变化，加上历史上（和正在进行的）物种损失，东北部的森林景观是探索过去两个世纪森林变化的理想场所。 这一地区的大多数历史记录，而在某些方面广泛，一般告诉我们很少关于森林结构动态，林分更新动态，或社区组成和自然干扰率。 一个跨学科的研究方法，探索森林生态学和艺术史的串联可以帮助我们了解历史生态系统和森林景观的代表性如何影响现代概念的荒野和自然。这个奖项反映了NSF的法定使命，并已被认为是值得支持的评估使用基金会的智力价值和更广泛的影响审查标准。

Understanding forests of the past helps to understand current forest ecosystems and how they may change in the future. In many forests, however, historical information is limited and it is difficult to assess the impact of loss of species on forest ecosystem structure and function. Historical landscape paintings may be a valuable source of information about the past, as they present color images that pre-date photography. These pictures may offer a way to explore past changes in forest structure that relate to current patterns in forest productivity and ecosystem function. However, the use of these images in historical ecology has been hampered by questions of image validity: How truly accurate are the images portrayed in these paintings? How much of an image is an artist’s manipulation of a scene to best illustrate a message, allegory, or romanticized view of nature? The proposed interdisciplinary project uses tools and knowledge from humanities and ecological sciences to address these concerns. The main objective is to assess how to mine forest paintings by nineteenth-century American artists as a potential data set for historical ecology. This project also represents a rare deep integration of approaches from science and humanities and has the potential to serve as a model for how crossing of disciplinary boundaries may have high value to society.This project joins the expertise of art scholars (who understand how and why nineteenth-century landscape images were created) with the expertise of scientists (who understand the structure and function of forest ecosystems). Research will focus on images and forests in the northeastern US from the nineteenth century. This was an era in which the forest landscape was rapidly transforming, and during which the popularity of landscape painting – particularly as practiced by the so-called Hudson River School – was simultaneously exploding. With historic and ongoing land use changes coupled with historic (and ongoing) species losses, northeastern forest landscapes are an ideal place to explore forest change over the past two centuries. Most historic records for this region, while extensive in some regards, generally tell us little about forest structural dynamics, stand regeneration dynamics, or community composition and natural disturbance rates. An interdisciplinary research approach exploring forest ecology and art history in tandem can help us understand historic ecosystems and how the representation of forested landscapes affects modern concepts of wilderness and nature.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.