Comparative Legacies of Human Land Use in the Brazilian Atlantic Forest

长期以来，热带森林一直被认为是过去人类存在的“原始”屏障，工业规模的清除被认为证实了人类在这些栖息地的可持续未来是不切实际的。然而，最近的大量考古和人类学研究，应用了一些最新的测量、建模和生物分子技术，显示了人类占领和管理这些生物多样性栖息地的悠久历史。对这一热带文化遗产进行详细的地方和区域研究，现在被认为是制定更有效的政策和在全世界热带森林进行养护工作的关键。然而，关于百年及以上尺度的热带森林的长期人类历史的比较信息仍然受到孤立的环境、历史和考古文献的限制。因此，缺乏关于不同形式的人为影响遗产的交叉和跨学科知识，阻碍了人文学科对保护和恢复工作做出有意义贡献的能力，而从理论上讲，人文学科在这一领域的理想定位是做出贡献。该项目旨在了解长期的人类土地利用和人口变化如何影响巴西大西洋森林，巴西大西洋森林是21世纪世界上最受威胁的热带森林之一。它将着重于人类活动对其生态和相关地球系统造成的变化，捕捉三个重点时期之间环境影响的时间和程度。这些代表了生存方式和人口制度的重大转变：前哥伦布时期（公元1500年之前）、殖民地时期（公元1500-1700年）和早期工业时期（公元1700-1808年）。该项目将产生人口统计信息、定居数据和多代理古生态记录的新组合，以创建人类如何在生物群系尺度上塑造大西洋森林的第一个深时间视角。对专门的考古、历史和生态领域知识的比较分析将产生长期的土地利用数据和“可用的过去”，用于气候科学、生态系统恢复和旨在保护这一至关重要但受到威胁的未来环境的政策目标。为了解决这些问题，该项目将综合多方面的“古文化”和古生态数据，比较不同的土地利用制度如何长期影响巴西南部和中部的大西洋森林。这项研究的新颖之处在于考古和历史数据的创造和整合，这些数据可以为将过去的人类活动纳入保护政策和气候模型的持续努力提供信息。考虑到1800年以前的人类活动是他们发展的下一个合乎逻辑的步骤，但主要的方法挑战仍然存在，这使得准确的、深入的土地利用历史模型比以往任何时候都更加重要。该项目开创的方法针对这一领域的两个突出问题：第一，无法系统地比较史前和历史土地利用和人口数据；第二，难以将环境和植被变化与过去土地利用等驱动因素直接联系起来。所提出的方法可以转移到其他具有类似古文化和生态数据来源的环境中，这将使人类对全球热带地区的长期影响进行关键的比较成为可能。除了对环境足迹的估计之外，该项目还将加深对大西洋森林土地利用强度和生物多样性之间的协同作用和权衡的了解，并加深对新热带地区界定人类世的阈值的了解。

Tropical forests have long been considered 'pristine' barriers to past human presence, with industrial-scale clearance supposedly confirming that sustainable futures for humans in these habitats is impractical. However, a wealth of recent archaeological and anthropological research, applying some of the latest surveying, modelling, and biomolecular techniques is showing the long history of human occupation and management of these biodiverse habitats. Detailed local and regional studies of this tropical cultural heritage is now acknowledged as being critical for the development of more effective policy and conservation efforts in tropical forests the world over. Nevertheless, comparative information on the long-term human history of tropical forests at the centennial scale and above remains limited by isolated environmental, historical, and archaeological literatures. Consequently, a lack of cross- and inter-disciplinary knowledge on the legacies of different forms of anthropogenic impact hinders the humanities' ability to contribute meaningfully to conservation and restoration efforts, an area that, in theory, they are ideally positioned to contribute. The project aims to understand how long-term human land use and population change have impacted the Brazilian Atlantic Forest, one of the most threatened tropical forests around the world in the 21st century. Focusing on changes to its ecology, and associated earth systems, that were caused by human activity, it will capture the timing and extent of environmental impacts between three focal periods. These represent major transitions in subsistence practices and demographic regimes: Pre-Columbian (before AD1500), Colonial (AD1500-1700), and Early Industrial (AD1700-1808). The project will produce a novel combination of demographic information, settlement data, and multi-proxy palaeoecological records to create the first deep time perspective on how humans have shaped the Atlantic Forest at a biome scale. The comparative analysis of specialised archaeological, historical, and ecological domain knowledge will produce long-term land use data and a 'usable past' for climate science, ecosystem restoration, and policy goals that aim to protect this crucial, but threatened, environment into the future.To address these issues, the project will synthesise multifaceted "palaeocultural" and palaeoecological data to compare how different land use regimes have impacted the Atlantic Forest of southern and central Brazil over the long term. The novelty of this research lies in the creation and integration of archaeological and historical data that can inform ongoing efforts to incorporate past human activity into conservation policy and climate models. Accounting for pre-1800 human activity is the next logical step in their development yet major methodological challenges remain, making accurate, deep-time models of land use history more important than ever. The approaches pioneered by this project target two prominent problems in this arena: first, the inability to systematically compare prehistoric and historic land use and population data, and second, the difficulty of directly linking environmental and vegetational change to drivers such as past land use. The proposed approach is transferable to other settings with similar sources of palaeo-cultural and -ecological data, which will enable crucial comparisons of the long-term human impacts across the global tropics to take place. Beyond estimates of environmental footprints, the project will also provide a greater understanding of synergies and trade-offs between land use intensity and biodiversity in the Atlantic Forest, as well as a greater understanding of the thresholds that define the Anthropocene in the Neotropics.