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知识并开发了新方法，以了解火灾是一个全球性的重要过程，长期以来一直受到气候和人类的影响。 由于火灾是一种重要的自然扰动，因此火灾状况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，以推进从景观到区域尺度的过去人类环境动态的研究。 该项目将提供新的视角、信息、见解和方法，以增进对美国和全球近期火灾以及长期火灾趋势的基本了解。 该项目还将提供有关生态系统恢复力的重要见解，为世界各地脆弱生态区的保护和资源管理提供信息。 项目结果将增强公共机构更好地了解火灾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和考古数据，以确定与人类相关的燃烧活动。 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。 研究人员将重点关注全新世晚期，以便更好地了解当时气候变化剧烈、南半球人口不断增长和扩张的时期的火灾控制。 他们将进行分析来回答三个主要问题：（1）气候和植被条件驱动的过去和现在的火灾状况的本质是什么？ (2) 需要用火的不同土地利用方式会产生哪些生态后果？ (3) 可能强化故意燃烧策略的潜在植被反馈有哪些？ 拟议的数据模型框架将有助于确定人类土地利用变化和气候缓慢变化驱动因素的重要性，并将有助于增强对中纬度地区气候变化和植被反馈的理解。 跨学科方法将改善当前的定性古生态和考古重建，并将补充从美国和国际上正在进行的生态研究中获得的见解。