From the UNIVERSITY OF WATERLOO:
People enhanced the environment, not degraded it, over past 13,000 years
Human occupation is usually associated with deteriorated landscapes, but new research shows that 13,000 years of repeated occupation by British Columbia’s coastal First Nations has had the opposite effect, enhancing temperate rainforest productivity.
Andrew Trant, a professor in the Faculty of Environment at the University of Waterloo, led the study in partnership with the University of Victoria and the Hakai Institute. The research combined remote-sensed, ecological and archaeological data from coastal sites where First Nations’ have lived for millennia. It shows trees growing at former habitation sites are taller, wider and healthier than those in the surrounding forest. This finding is, in large part, due to shell middens and fire.
“It’s incredible that in a time when so much research is showing us the negative legacies people leave behind, here is the opposite story,” said Trant, a professor in Waterloo’s School of Environment, Resources and Sustainability. “These forests are thriving from the relationship with coastal First Nations. For more than 13,000 years –500 generations — people have been transforming this landscape. So this area that at first glance seems pristine and wild is actually highly modified and enhanced as a result of human behaviour.”
Fishing of intertidal shellfish intensified in the area over the past 6,000 years, resulting in the accumulation of deep shell middens, in some cases more than five metres deep and covering thousands of square metres of forest area. The long-term practice of harvesting shellfish and depositing remnants inland has contributed significant marine-derived nutrients to the soil as shells break down slowly, releasing calcium over time.
The study examined 15 former habitation sites in the Hakai Lúxvbálís Conservancy on Calvert and Hecate Islands using remote-sensed, ecological and archaeological methods to compare forest productivity with a focus on western red cedar.
The work found that this disposal and stockpiling of shells, as well as the people’s use of fire, altered the forest through increased soil pH and important nutrients, and also improved soil drainage.
This research is the first to find long-term use of intertidal resources enhancing forest productivity. Trant says it is likely similar findings will occur at archaeological sites along many global coastlines.
“These results alter the way we think about time and environmental impact,” he said. “Future research will involve studying more of these human-modified landscapes to understand the extent of these unexpected changes.”
The study appears today in Nature Communications.
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https://www.newscientist.com/article/dn27945-myth-of-pristine-amazon-rainforest-busted-as-old-cities-reappear/
Reply to englandrichard ==> Thank you for this link (I was actively searching for it..then saw your comment.)
“Few if any pristine landscapes remained in 1492,” says Clement. “Many present Amazon forests, while seemingly natural, are domesticated.”
This has been found true in all areas of the world inhabited by man — mankind alters the environment to its own purposes (as do most animal and plant populations — often in conflict with one another but occassionally cooperating).
What we see today as “pristine ancient forests” are exceedingly rare, not because we have modernly destroyed them, but because there are few places in which mankind hasn’t already, long ago, changed the environment in major ways. Some of these changes have been destructive — the overgrazing and deforestation of huge swaths of the Mediterranean and Middle Eastern regions for example. Others, neither destructive or beneficial, just making changes — the early Americans regularly used fire to create open areas in forests to improve hunting of large animals such as deer, elk, and bison.
Well, in the couple of hundred years since white folk showed up in Australia, we managed to cut down around 75% of our tropical rainforests.
hmmm. eat fish. defecate upstream.
Archaeological work near Port Angeles WA show that tribal people used fire to fell trees, to create meadows where more edible plants could grow, and interface shrubbery where animals and birds lived (deer like tree leaves and plant shoots, for example). They harvested the deer for meat and hides, useful for clothing and tents. They burned themeadows periodically to suppress competing species (Douglas Fir tends to take over) and kill insects harmful to edible plants (such as Camas lilly roots).
Across the Strait of Juan de Fuca, the People’s State of Saanich is oppressing property owners to protect those meadows, which they call Garry Oak Ecosystems. IOW, they consider recent human activity bad but exempt human activity from more than a few hundred years ago.
The definition of Garry Oak Ecosystem creeps, some consider vernal ponds part of a GOE (that’s just a seasonal pond, existing in a depression underlain by soil that does not drain well – basic puddle we called that where I grew up without an Garry Oaks around).
The government of the PSS misleads by defining species on political boundaries not the essentials real people have in mind when they use the word. That lets them pull the scam of claiming that Garry Oak trees only exist on southern Vancouver Island, when in fact they grow down the coast to California. So common in Oregon that lumber from them is shipped to BC so people can vint wine in Garry Oak barrels. (South of that line on pieces of paper that species can’t read the tree is called Oregon White Oak and other colloquial names, Garry is its formal biological name.)
Out west of Victoria, historical records show that people from the city complained about smoke from tribal burning of brush to enhance growth of berries.
Tribal people exploited the land, practicing basic farming with the meadows and with clam gardens – reducing beach slope to the optimum for clam growth, akin to terracing land.
Of course animals exploit the environment:
– Beavers are especially bad.
– Bear dig dens.
– Rabbits dig burrows for soccer players to wrench their ankle in.
It’s life.