期刊
QUATERNARY INTERNATIONAL
卷 611, 期 -, 页码 66-76出版社
PERGAMON-ELSEVIER SCIENCE LTD
DOI: 10.1016/j.quaint.2021.01.026
关键词
Fire regimes; Charcoal; Pollen; Human impacts; Grasslands; Woody encroachment
资金
- National Research Foundation African Origins Platform [68488]
- Palaeontological Scientific Trust (PAST)
- University of Cape Town Vice-Chancellor's Research Fellowship
- ACCESS Programme funding
The study compares palaeoecological evidence with archaeological records to understand the impact of changing human activity on fire regimes and vegetation dynamics in the Drakensberg Mountains of South Africa over the past two millennia. The results show that the arrival of early agropastoralists led to a change in fire regimes and vegetation composition, while colonial fire suppression and logging activities also influenced ecosystem dynamics. The palaeoecological evidence highlights the close relationship between human activity and environmental changes in the region.
Palaeoecological evidence is compared with the existing archaeological record to understand how changing human activity, over the past two millennia, impacted fire regimes and vegetation dynamics in the Drakensberg Mountains, South Africa. Sediment cores from two wetland sites in the Cathedral Peak area of the northern Drakensberg, KwaZulu-Natal are dated using accelerator mass spectrometry to chronologically support biological proxy data. Fossil pollen analysis is used to detect changes in vegetation composition, and macroscopic charcoal to reconstruct changing fire regimes. Charcoal accumulation rates (CHAR) are used as a proxy for burned biomass, and charcoal width-to-length ratio (W/L) as a proxy for dominant fuel type, whether grassy or woody. Results indicate an increase in CHAR, coincident with the appearance of cereal-type grasses (>40 mu m) c. 550 cal BP, suggesting a change in fire regimes associated with the arrival of early agropastoralists. A notable decline in charcoal W/L at this time indicates a shift towards a more grassy fuel type. This is consistent with a seasonal shift in the timing of ignitions from high intensity late season lightning fires to low intensity early season anthropogenic fires. The latter are less damaging to woody vegetation explaining an overall shift to a more grassy fuel type. Large scale ecosystem change is evident in the colonial period, including decreased forest pollen taxa such as Podocarpus, which may be linked to colonial period logging. The increased dominance of Pteridium spores documents the invasion trajectory of bracken fern into montane grasslands in the area, which is attributed to ecosystem disturbance in the form of colonial fire suppression. The subalpine wetland clearly documents woody encroachment of the surrounding open grassland landscape during the agropastoral and subsequent colonial periods. By contrast, at the montane wetland site, these trends appear to be overprinted by local forest dynamics and recent deforestation, likely an elevation effect. Palaeoecological evidence demonstrates how changes in fire regimes and vegetation composition in the northern Drakensberg are closely tied to human activity over the past two millennia.
作者
我是这篇论文的作者
点击您的名字以认领此论文并将其添加到您的个人资料中。
推荐
暂无数据