Understanding Fire-Human Dynamics Along a Forest-Steppe Ecotone

了解森林草原生态交错带沿线的火与人类动态

• 批准号: 1461590
• 负责人: Cathy Whitlock
• 金额: $ 37.5万
• 依托单位: Montana State University
• 依托单位国家: 美国
• 项目类别: Standard Grant
• 财政年份: 2015
• 资助国家: 美国
• 起止时间: 2015-06-01 至 2021-08-31
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/showAward?AWD_ID=1461590&HistoricalAwards=false
• 关键词: Understanding; Fire; Human; Dynamics; Along

This research project contributes new knowledge and develops new approaches for understanding fire as a globally significant process, which has long been influenced by climate and humans. Because fire is an important natural disturbance, alterations of fire regimes can have significant impacts on vulnerable ecosystems. The investigators will develop new strategies to advance research about past human-environment dynamics from landscape to regional scales. The project will provide new perspectives, information, insights, and approaches to advance basic understanding of recent fires as well as long-term fire trends in the U.S. and globally. The project also will provide important insights about ecosystem resilience that can inform conservation and resource management of fragile ecoregions in various parts of the world. Project results will enhance the capacity of public agencies to better understand impacts of fire and to develop more effective preventive and mitigation procedures.The project will use new ecosystems modeling approaches to analyze paleoecological and archeological data in order to identify human-related burning activities. It will examine the environmental consequences of fire and assess the biophysical feedbacks of such fires. The investigators will focus on the late Holocene period to gain a better understanding of the controls of fire at a time when climate variability was high and human populations were growing and expanding in the southern hemisphere. They will conduct analyses to answer three main questions: (1) What is the nature of past and present fire regimes driven by climate and vegetation conditions? (2) What are the ecological consequences of different land-use practices that require fire? (3) What are the potential vegetation feedbacks that may have reinforced deliberate burning strategies? The proposed data-model framework will help to identify the importance of changes in human land use and slowly varying drivers in climate, and they will help enhance understanding of climate variability and vegetation feedbacks in the mid-latitudes. The interdisciplinary approach will improve current qualitative paleoecological and archeological reconstructions, and it will complement insights gained from ecological research underway in the U.S. and internationally.

该研究项目贡献了新的知识，并开发了将火作为全球重要过程理解的新方法，长期以来一直受到气候和人类的影响。 由于火是重要的自然干扰，因此火灾制度的改变可能会对脆弱的生态系统产生重大影响。 研究人员将制定新的策略，以将有关过去环境动态的研究从景观到区域尺度。 该项目将提供新的观点，信息，见解和方法，以促进对最近的火灾以及美国和全球的长期火灾趋势的基本理解。 该项目还将提供有关生态系统弹性的重要见解，可以为世界各地脆弱的生态区域的保护和资源管理提供信息。 项目结果将提高公共机构更好地了解火灾的影响并制定更有效的预防和缓解程序的能力。该项目将使用新的生态系统建模方法来分析古生态学和考古数据，以识别与人相关的燃烧活动。 它将检查火灾的环境后果，并评估此类火灾的生物物理反馈。 调查人员将重点关注全新世晚期，以更好地了解气候变化较高并且人口在南半球的增长和扩大时，对火灾的控制有了更好的了解。 他们将进行分析以回答三个主要问题：（1）由气候和植被条件驱动的过去和现在火灾的本质是什么？ （2）需要火的不同土地使用实践带来的生态后果是什么？ （3）可能会加强故意燃烧策略的潜在植被反馈？ 拟议的数据模型框架将有助于确定人类土地使用变化的重要性，并在气候下缓慢变化的驱动因素，它们将有助于增强对中期宽容中气候变异性和植被反馈的理解。 跨学科的方法将改善当前的定性古生态和考古重建，它将补充美国和国际生态研究所获得的见解。