Hi My Friends: A VUELO DE UN QUINDE EL BLOG., Small, shifting human populations existed in the Amazon before the
arrival of Europeans, with little long-term effect on the forest.
Findings overturn idea that the Amazon had large populations of humans that transformed the landscape
Credit: Crystal McMichael
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Sampling location, seen from atop a river bluff in the Peruvian Amazon.
Credit: Crystal McMichael
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Credit: Crystal McMichael
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Researcher Luiz Lobato prepares vehicles for travel along the Porto Velho-Manaus transect.
Credit: Crystal McMichael
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Scientists make their way along the Amazon River to sample soils along river bluffs.
Credit: Crystal McMichael
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Credit: Crystal McMichael
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The researchers' work is described in the June 15, 2012 issue of the journal Science.
Credit: Copyright AAAS 2012
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Small, shifting human populations existed in the Amazon before the
arrival of Europeans, with little long-term effect on the forest.
That's
the result of research led by Crystal McMichael and Mark Bush of the
Florida Institute of Technology (FIT). The finding overturns the idea
the Amazon was a cultural parkland in pre-Columbian times with large
human populations that transformed vast tracts of the landscape.
The
Amazon Basin is an of area of Earth that has one of the highest
instances of biodiversity. Understanding how it was modified by humans
in the past is important for conservation and for understanding the
ecological processes in tropical rainforests.
McMichael, Bush and a
team of researchers looked at how widespread human effects were in
Amazonia before Europeans arrived. They published their results in this
week's issue of the journal Science.
"The findings have
major implications for how we understand the effect of the land-use
change now occurring in Amazonia," said Alan Tessier, program director
in the National Science Foundation's Division of Environmental Biology,
which funded the research.
"Making the assumption that this system
is resilient to deforestation, it turns out, isn't a position supported
by historical evidence," Tessier said.
If the pre-Columbian
Amazon was a highly altered landscape, then most of the Amazon's current
biodiversity could have come from human effects.
The team
retrieved 247 soil cores from 55 locations throughout the central and
western Amazon, sampling sites that were likely disturbed by humans,
such as river banks and other areas known from archaeological evidence
to have been occupied by people.
They used markers in the cores to track the histories of fire, vegetation and human alterations of the soil.
The
scientists conclude that people lived in small groups, with larger
populations in the eastern Amazon--and most people lived near rivers.
They
did not live in large settlements throughout the basin as was
previously thought. Even sites of supposedly large settlements did not
show evidence of high population densities and large-scale agriculture.
All
the signs point to smaller, mobile populations before Europeans
arrived. These small populations did not alter the forests
substantially.
"The amazing biodiversity of the Amazon is not a
by-product of past human disturbance," said McMichael. "We can't assume
that these forests will be resilient to disturbance, because most of
them have, at most, been lightly disturbed in the past.
"There is
no parallel in western Amazonia for the scale of modern disturbance that
accompanies industrial agriculture, road construction and the synergies
of those disturbances with climate change."
Other co-authors of
the paper are D.R. Piperno of the Smithsonian National Museum of Natural
History; M.R. Silman of Wake Forest University; A.R. Zimmerman of the
University of Florida; M.F. Raczka of FIT; and L.C. Lobato of the
Federal University of Rondônia in Brazil.
-NSF-
Karen Rhine, FIT (321) 674-8964 krhine@fit.edu
The National Science Foundation (NSF) is an independent federal
agency that supports fundamental research and education across all
fields of science and engineering. In fiscal year (FY) 2012, its budget
is $7.0 billion. NSF funds reach all 50 states through grants to nearly
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receives over 50,000 competitive requests for funding, and makes about
11,000 new funding awards. NSF also awards nearly $420 million in
professional and service contracts yearly.
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