The Environmental History of the Panama Land Bridge

巴拿马陆桥的环境历史

• 批准号: 8811100
• 负责人: Paul Colinvaux
• 金额: $ 2.5万
• 依托单位: Ohio State University Research Foundation -DO NOT USE
• 依托单位国家: 美国
• 项目类别: Standard Grant
• 财政年份: 1988
• 资助国家: 美国
• 起止时间: 1988-09-01 至 1990-02-28
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/showAward?AWD_ID=8811100&HistoricalAwards=false
• 关键词: Environmental; History; Panama; Land; Bridge

Because of its critical location as a landbridge linking North and South America, Panama has been an area of intense interest to climatologists, biologists, anthropologists, geographers, and other scientists trying to reconstruct and interpret the distribution and movements of plants, animals, and people in the Americas. Because movements of species have been influenced by the limited number of natural environments on the isthmus, and because climatic changes have altered the mix of environments dramatically over the last few dozen millennia, reconstructing the environmental history of Panama is a critical facet of research for a broad range of inquiries into the paleoecology and paleoanthropology of the Americas. This project is part of a larger, integrated effort to gather and interpret evidence that will substantially improve knowledge of the environmental history of Panama. Sediment cores have been gathered from lakes and bogs in scattered parts of Panama, two sets of which provide especially good records over periods as long as the last 26,000 years. This project will focus on analyzing the two sets of cores in laboratories, using pollen, diatoms, and phytoliths in the cores to reconstruct the range of species present in the vicinities of the core sites. These data will be integrated with data from other sites to develop more complete records of environmental change in Panama than have been available before. The enhancement of the data-based environmental history of Panama that will result from this project is significant in its own right, but it also will assist scholars in many other lines of inquiry. More accurate reconstructions of vegetational change will permit climatologists to refine regional climatic histories, which will help arbitrate current theoretical debates regarding the nature of post- glacial climatic change. Biologists and biogeographers will have more detailed data for their analyses of the migration of species and the character of response to environmental change. Anthropologists will find the data useful for better determining the timing and location of human occupancy through the presence of pollen and phytoliths of domesticated plants. This project therefore provides opportunities for increasing knowledge in a broad range of sciences.

由于其作为北美和南美连接的兰德桥的关键位置，因此一直是气候学家，生物学家，人类学家，地理学家以及其他试图重建和解释美洲植物，动物和人民的分布和运动的广泛兴趣领域。 因为物种的运动受地峡上自然环境数量有限的影响，并且由于气候变化在过去几千年中改变了环境的混合，因此重建了巴拿马环境史，这是对美国询问的广泛研究的关键方面。 该项目是收集和解释证据的更大综合努力的一部分，这些证据将大大提高对巴拿马环境历史的了解。 已经从巴拿马各地的湖泊和沼泽中收集了沉积物核心，其中两套在过去26，000年的时间内提供了特别好的记录。 该项目将着重于分析实验室中的两组核心，并使用核心中的花粉，硅藻和植物石来重建核心地点囊泡中存在的物种范围。 这些数据将与来自其他站点的数据集成在一起，以制定巴拿马环境变化的完整记录，而不是以前可用。 该项目将由该项目产生的基于数据的环境历史的增强本身就是重要的，但它也将有助于许多其他询问方面的学者。 对植被变化的更准确的重建将使气候学家能够完善区域气候历史，这将有助于仲裁有关冰川后气候变化性质的当前理论辩论。 生物学家和生物地理学家将拥有更多详细的数据，用于分析物种迁移以及对环境变化的反应的特征。 人类学家将发现数据可用于更好地确定人类占用的时间和位置，这是通过驯化植物的花粉和植物石的存在。 因此，该项目为增加广泛的科学知识提供了机会。