Mosslands in early modern Lancashire, carbon, community and conservation, 1500/1800

这个博士项目是对1500年至1800年间英格兰西北部苔藓地景观历史衰退的探索。我专注于三个核心主题；能源转型和工业革命，泥炭作为一种脆弱的公共资源的管理，最后是不断变化的苔藓地环境景观的历史特征。与兰开夏野生动物信托基金会的合作将使该项目进一步作出两项贡献；让当地社区了解其环境的历史，并提供历史证据，为重新引入当地灭绝的物种提供信息。泥炭沼泽是四种不同类型的湿地之一，其特点是积累了酸性、富含碳的泥炭。泥炭的形成是由于植物物质的腐烂受到抑制，例如由于浸水土壤中缺乏氧气。从植物中继承下来的储存碳使泥炭成为一种有用的缓慢燃烧的燃料，这是苔藓群落几千年来一直利用的一个特点。荷兰早期的工业转型是由泥炭作为燃料来源“启动”的，泥炭可能在英格兰西北部的原始工业经济中发挥了重要作用。这个项目将探索这种泥炭开采是否构成了前现代农村工业和更知名的19世纪煤炭动力工业之间的化石燃料连续性。西北部的大部分苔藓地都是当地人共有的。这些“平民”对未封闭的公共土地行使有限的、但受法律和传统保护的权利。这片公共土地受到管理机构的保护，正如蒂娜·德·穆尔和其他人所认为的那样，这些机构致力于保护土地及其家属免受市场压力的影响。这种做法最近被描述为“可持续的”，这个项目将调查兰开夏郡相对贫瘠的苔藓上共同资源管理的可持续性。此外，该项目还将探讨封地对资源管理的影响及其社会和经济后果。这个博士项目的最终目的是促进对前现代人类造成的环境变化的理解。虽然人类引起的（或“人为的”）环境变化通常被认为是一种现代现象，但自从有人类以来，人类就一直在改变他们的环境。事实上，一些湿地可能是英格兰北部晚期采集者文化人工开垦的结果。撰写苔藓的社会和经济历史将使兰开夏野生动物信托基金会能够以人类的尺度参与当地社区的环境变化故事。在这样做的过程中，这个项目将有助于保护工作，旨在提高人们对苔藓地景观的重要性和价值的认识。此外，国际自然保护联盟的指导方针要求重新引入方案提供重新引入物种的历史先例的证据。通过绘制早期现代公地的生态图，该项目将为重新引入当地灭绝的物种提供信息。与信托基金的Chat Moss项目官员合作，将使历史苔藓地的证据与对苔藓地生态的现代理解相结合。

This PhD project is an exploration of the historical decline of mossland landscapes in the north-west of England between 1500 and 1800. I focus on three core themes; energy transformations and the industrial revolution, the management of peat as a fragile common-pool resource, and finally the historic characters of a changing mossland environment landscape. Collaboration with the Lancashire Wildlife Trust will enable this project to make two further contributions; engaging local communities with the history of their environment, and providing historical evidence to inform the reintroduction of locally extinct species. Peat bogs are one of four distinct types of wetland and are characterised by an accumulation of acidic, carbon-rich peat. Peat forms when the decay of plant matter is arrested, for instance by a lack of oxygen in waterlogged soil. The stored carbon inherited from the plant matter makes peat useful as a slow-burning fuel, a feature that mossland communities have taken advantage of for thousands of years. Earlier industrial transformations in the Netherlands had been 'kick-started' by peat as a fuel source, and it is possible that peat played a significant role in the proto-industrial economy of the north-west of England. This project will explore whether such peat exploitation constituted a fossil-fuelled continuity between pre-modern rural industry and the more recognisable, coal-powered industry of the nineteenth-century. Much of the mossland of the North West was held in common by the locals. These 'commoners' exercised limited but legally and traditionally protected rights over the unenclosed common land. This common land was protected by governing bodies, which as Tine de Moor and others have argued, worked to protect it and its dependents from the pressures of the market. Such practices have been recently characterised as 'sustainable', and this project will investigate the sustainability of common resource management on the relatively infertile mosslands of Lancashire. Furthermore, the project will explore the impact of the enclosure of the mossland on resource management, and its social and economic consequences. The final aim of this PhD project is to contribute to the understanding of pre-modern human-caused environmental change. Although human-caused (or 'anthropogenic') environmental change is often thought of as a modern phenomenon, humans have been altering their environment for as long as there have been humans. Indeed, some wetlands may be the result of artificial clearings created by late gatherer cultures in the north of England. Writing the social and economic history of the moss will enable the Lancashire Wildlife Trust to engage the local community with stories of environmental change at a human scale. In doing so, this project will feed into conservation efforts aimed at raising awareness of the importance and value of mossland landscapes. Furthermore, International Union for Conservation of Nature guidelines require reintroduction programmes to provide evidence of the historical precedence of reintroduced species. By charting the ecology of the early modern commons, this project will inform the reintroduction of locally extinct species. Collaboration with the Trust's Chat Moss Project Officer will allow the evidence of the historical mossland to be inflected with modern understandings of mossland ecologies.