Posted on 03/21/2011 9:45:31 AM PDT by decimon
Study has important implications to how "sensitive" landscapes are to land-use and farming strategies
(Waco, Texas - March 21, 2011) A new study by Baylor University geology researchers shows that Native Americans' land use nearly a century ago produced a widespread impact on the eastern North American landscape and floodplain development several hundred years prior to the arrival of major European settlements.
The study appears on-line in the journal Geology.
Researchers attribute early colonial land-use practices, such as deforestation, plowing and damming with influencing present-day hydrological systems across eastern North America. Previous studies suggest that Native Americans' land use in eastern North America initially caused the change in hydrological systems, however, little direct evidence has been provided until now.
The Baylor study found that pre-European so-called "natural" floodplains have a history of prehistoric indigenous land use, and thus colonial-era Europeans were not the first people to have an impact on the hydrologic systems of eastern North America. The study also found that prehistoric small-scale agricultural societies caused widespread ecological change and increased sedimentation in hydrologic systems during the Medieval Climate Anomaly-Little Ice Age, which occurred about 700 to 1,000 years ago.
"These are two very important findings," said Gary Stinchcomb, a Baylor doctoral candidate who conducted the study. "The findings conclusively demonstrate that Native Americans in eastern North America impacted their environment well before the arrival of Europeans. Through their agricultural practices, Native Americans increased soil erosion and sediment yields to the Delaware River basin."
The Baylor researchers found that prehistoric people decreased forest cover to reorient their settlements and intensify corn production. They also contributed to increased sedimentation in valley bottoms about 700 to 1,000 years ago, much earlier than previously thought.
(Excerpt) Read more at baylor.edu ...
Native Americans Significantly Modified American Landscape...Prior...Arrival...Europeans
But only to improve it for the better, and in ways that were spiritually respectful of Mother Nature, unlike the Evil Europeans. ;-)
While researching a novel occurring in 1799 in the Kentucky Tennessee area, I discovered that an area call the Barrens was a routinely burned prairie that the Indians maintained as a buffalo common. Later I found out that earlier, the Shenandoah Valley had also surved as a burning maintained buffalo common as well. Indians also used controlled burns to clean the underbrush out in old forests.
Have you read ‘1491’? It is a book detailing what the Western Hemisphere was like before Columbus.
Very interesting read, particularly about the extensive native infrastructure existing in the Amazon basin.
Posted here nine years ago.
The noble savage would never harm Gaia.
I’ll check out 1491.
Yesterday blam, my parallel reading led me down your way.
To Poverty Point, in Louisiana I think, just west of the state line. I read the Wiki piece and saw numerous images on the web.
It is apparently not only very old, but massive.
So much to read...... there is no end
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