Environmental Transformations linked to Early Human Occupation in Northern Australia.

几千年来，气候变化、人类活动和其他干扰之间的相互作用如何塑造了我们今天所知的澳大利亚景观？现有的来自古生态和考古来源的证据表明，自公元前50000至40000年间人类抵达澳大利亚以来，生物多样性、植被覆盖和火灾频率发生了重大变化。随着时间的推移，人类在多大程度上影响或凌驾于自然进程尚不清楚。创新的植被和大型动物群重建中的高分辨率、多代理数据将首次对澳大利亚热带稀树草原对一系列自然和人为影响的反应进行定量评估。

How have interactions between climatic change, human activities and other disturbances over thousands of years shaped the landscapes we know today in Australia? Existing lines of evidence from palaeoecological and archaeological sources point to significant changes to biodiversity, vegetation cover, and fire frequency since the arrival of people into Australia sometime between 50000 to 40000 yr BP. The extent to which humans influenced or overrode natural processes through time remains unclear. High-resolution, multi-proxy data in an innovative vegetation and megafaunal reconstruction will provide the first quantitative assessment of the response of Australian tropical savannas to a range of natural and anthropogenic influences.