Journal
ANTHROPOCENE
Volume 15, Issue -, Pages 22-36Publisher
ELSEVIER SCI LTD
DOI: 10.1016/j.ancene.2016.07.001
Keywords
Stone walls; Human impacts; Land use dynamics; Anthropocene; New England; LiDAR
Funding
- Historical Geography Specialty Group of the American Association of Geographers
- University of Connecticut Graduate School
- University of Connecticut College of Liberal Arts and Sciences Dean Ross MacKinnon Fellowship
Ask authors/readers for more resources
English-style agriculture in the northeastern United States spurred widespread deforestation beginning in the 17th century. Heavy plowing within a rocky, glacial till-mantled landscape resulted in soil erosion and deep frosts. For hundreds of years, stones exposed at the surface due to these processes were built into walls that have become an iconic feature of this landscape, and indicative of past human impacts and land use dynamics in areas that are now reforested. We investigate stone walls in five towns in Connecticut, USA, using airborne Light Detection and Ranging (LiDAR), field measurements, surficial geology maps, and historic agricultural census data. Stone walls are prevalent throughout the study region (similar to 2113 km over similar to 569 km(2)), but spatial density ranges widely from 0 to 12 km/km(2). Important controls on the density of stone walls include surficial materials (e.g., similar to 4.0 km/km(2) on glacial till compared to 1.5 km/km(2) on floodplain alluvium), and whether land had been improved for agriculture (similar to 5.2 km/km(2)). The length of stone walls derived from analysis of LiDAR data combined with field measurements (average height of 0.76 +/- 0.23 m; width of 0.96 +/- 0.50 m), indicates that an average of similar to 1.4 x 106m3 of stone was moved for constructing walls in the study towns alone. Overall, this study highlights the spatial distribution of 17th-20th century agriculture and Anthropocene landscape change in the northeastern USA, providing important implications for human-environment studies in other deglaciated regions of the United States and landscapes with stone-rich soils on a global scale where historic agriculture occurred. (C) 2016 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
Authors
I am an author on this paper
Click your name to claim this paper and add it to your profile.
Reviews
Recommended
No Data Available