RAPID: Quantifying the Effects of Historical Indigenous Burning and Bison on Mountain Valley Forest Structure and Fire Regimes

RAPID：量化历史上土著燃烧和野牛对山谷森林结构和火灾状况的影响

• 批准号: 1724770
• 负责人: Donald Falk
• 金额: $ 2.8万
• 依托单位: University of Arizona
• 依托单位国家: 美国
• 项目类别: Standard Grant
• 财政年份: 2017
• 资助国家: 美国
• 起止时间: 2017-02-15 至 2019-01-31
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/showAward?AWD_ID=1724770&HistoricalAwards=false
• 关键词: RAPID; Quantifying; Effects; Historical; Indigenous

This award is supported as Rapid Response Research (RAPID). The investigators plan to recover data that will be destroyed by a planned forest burn scheduled for Spring 2017. Pre and post-colonial period Native Americans actively managed their natural environments through the use of fire to produce grasslands and boost bison populations and this at risk data has the potential to provide critical insights into the natural resource management practices of Native North Americans from the 1600's to the present. A key element of the research is to use the recovered data to map the landscape of the Clear Water Valley in Alberta Canada and to estimate the population numbers of bison supported in the region historically to the present. Understanding the historic ecosystem and the bison populations in the region is a critical part of the decision to reintroduce bison species in the Rocky Mountain region. As a subsistence species utilized by early Native Americans for food, shelter, clothing, and religious practice, bison are a cultural and natural keystone species in the region. As a species hunted to near extinction by the late 1800's, currently, both public and Tribal land managers are considering projects to reintroduce bison into contemporary ecosystems. The researchers argue that after bison and traditional indigenous land management were removed from these ecosystems in the late 1800's the landscape substantially changed, to the point that it may no longer be suitable for bison reintroduction. The project will map, quantify, and provide insights into how Indigenous burning historically created habitats supporting substantial bison populations in the Rocky Mountains near Banff National Park (BNP) in Canada, which can be compared to other regions of the North where cultural burning was also practiced. In addition, the researchers will provide insights into the implications of these landscape transformations and their disappearance for the management of forests, fire, and fauna today. The region for the RAPID is anticipated to be particularly well suited for study; 1) Banff National Park has a bison reintroduction program and 2) it is a region where Indigenous peoples, such as the Kootenai, historically used cultural burning to create open and nutrient-enriched grassy habitat for bison. Today, these and similar Rocky Mountain valleys are densely forested due to the exclusion of traditional indigenous burning, the introduction of modern fire suppression, and other factors. In order to assess and achieve bison restoration objectives similar to what existed historically, it is vital to quantify landscape condition during the period of traditional indigenous management. Coordination between fire management programs and bison reintroduction groups could benefit the interests of both groups and improve the odds of attaining bison population restoration goals.This project will demonstrate and quantify changes in bison habitat by creating a 3D time-lapse map showing the transformation of the Clearwater Valley in Alberta, Canada from the 1600s to present. The research team will recreate the valley's fire history using modern dendrochronology, cross-dating tree scars left by historical fires. This phase of research will produce a stand age structure reconstruction, a traditional fire scar history using the program FHAES, a climate reconstruction (to determine the degree of anthropogenic vs. climatic influence on the fire regime(s) over time), a comparison of known historical human and bison population events (such as smallpox outbreaks) with fire frequency and tree recruitment shifts, and spatiotemporal GIS maps compiling all of the above. In addition, an unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) will collect 3-dimensional landscape data to measure the valley's modern biotic landscape. A digital time-lapse map will incorporate the tree-ring history to extend the 3D landscape model back in time. Lastly, the investigators will derive estimates of how much biomass burning has changed over the course of the last 300+ years in the Clearwater Valley sample area. The project's novel fusion of dendrochronology and 3D spatiotemporal GIS expands the realm of what is possible for scientific methodology across disciplinary boundaries. The results of this study will also be applicable across national boundaries by showing not only how much change in the landscape would be necessary for Banff National Park's bison restoration goals, but also demonstrate the need for similar investigations by land managers across North America.

该奖项由快速响应研究 (RAPID) 提供支持。 调查人员计划恢复数据，这些数据将因 2017 年春季计划的森林烧毁而被破坏。殖民时期前后美洲原住民通过使用火来开垦草原和增加野牛数量，积极管理其自然环境，而这些数据处于危险之中有潜力为 1600 年代至今北美原住民的自然资源管理实践提供重要见解。 该研究的一个关键要素是利用恢复的数据绘制加拿大艾伯塔省清水河谷的景观图，并估计该地区历史上至今的野牛数量。 了解该地区的历史生态系统和野牛种群是决定在落基山脉地区重新引入野牛物种的关键部分。 作为早期美洲原住民用于食物、住所、衣服和宗教活动的自给物种，野牛是该地区文化和自然的关键物种。 作为一种在 1800 年代末被猎杀而濒临灭绝的物种，目前，公共和部落土地管理者都在考虑将野牛重新引入当代生态系统的项目。 研究人员认为，在 1800 年代末野牛和传统的土著土地管理从这些生态系统中消失后，景观发生了巨大变化，以至于可能不再适合野牛重新引入。 该项目将绘制、量化并深入了解历史上土著焚烧如何在加拿大班夫国家公园 (BNP) 附近的落基山脉创造了支持大量野牛种群的栖息地，这可以与也发生过文化焚烧的北方其他地区进行比较练习过。 此外，研究人员还将深入了解这些景观转变及其消失对当今森林、火灾和动物群管理的影响。预计 RAPID 区域特别适合研究； 1) 班夫国家公园有野牛重新引入计划，2) 在该地区，库特奈等原住民历史上曾利用文化焚烧为野牛创造开放且营养丰富的草地栖息地。如今，由于排除了传统的本土焚烧、现代灭火技术的引入以及其他因素，这些以及类似的落基山脉山谷森林茂密。 为了评估和实现与历史上类似的野牛恢复目标，量化传统本土管理时期的景观状况至关重要。火灾管理计划和野牛放归团体之间的协调可以使两个群体的利益受益，并提高实现野牛种群恢复目标的几率。该项目将通过创建显示野牛栖息地转变的 3D 延时地图来展示和量化野牛栖息地的变化。加拿大艾伯塔省克利尔沃特谷，从 1600 年代至今。 研究小组将利用现代树木年代学、交叉年代测定历史火灾留下的树木疤痕来重建山谷的火灾历史。这一阶段的研究将进行标准年龄结构重建、使用 FHAES 程序的传统火灾疤痕历史、气候重建（以确定人为与气候对火灾状况随时间的影响程度）、比较已知的历史人类和野牛种群事件（例如天花爆发）以及火灾频率和树木补充变化，以及编制上述所有内容的时空 GIS 地图。 此外，无人机（UAV）将收集3维景观数据，以测量山谷的现代生物景观。 数字延时地图将结合树木年轮的历史，将 3D 景观模型回溯到过去。最后，研究人员将对过去 300 多年里克利尔沃特谷样本区域生物质燃烧发生的变化进行估计。该项目将树木年代学和 3D 时空 GIS 进行了新颖的融合，扩展了跨学科边界的科学方法论的可能领域。这项研究的结果也将适用于跨国界，不仅显示了班夫国家公园的野牛恢复目标需要对景观进行多大的改变，而且还表明北美各地的土地管理者需要进行类似的调查。