Research @ ASU ALPHA
Land-Use and Landscape Socioecology in the Mediterranean Basin: A Natural Laboratory for the Study of the Long-Term Interaction of Human and Natural Systems [Collection]
Author/Contributor: Barton, C. Michael — Fall, Patricia — Falconer, Steven — Arrowsmith, J. Ramón — Sarjoughian, Hessam — Redman, Charles — Clark, Geoffrey A. — Wentz, Elizabeth — Aspinall, Richard — van der Leeuw, Sander — Berelov, Ilya — Hutchins, Jana — Mitasova, Helena — Hill, Brett — José Carrión — Bernabeu, Joan — Badal, Ernestina — LaRoca, Neus — al Nahar, Maysoon — Bryson, Reid — Arzt, Jennifer — Schuldenrein, Joseph Summary: NSF Award Number 0410269 ; award period: August 15, 2004 - July 31, 2009 Project Description and Significance: The longest and best-studied record of the ways in which human activities have transformed the world is found in the Mediterranean Basin, encompassing both the earliest known agricultural landuse and the earliest civilizations to become dependent on these human-managed socioecosystems. Decades of intensive archaeological and paleoecological study, has amassed rich and diverse data about human-environmental interaction in this region. We use this body of information in a new and exciting way as the basis for a modeling laboratory to investigate the long-term dynamics of human landuse and landscapes. All of modern society is based ultimately on an agropastoral subsistence economy. Such dependence on domestic plants and animals first appeared in the Mediterranean basin in the early Holocene, and represented a dramatic reorganization of human ecology. It also involved increasingly intensive efforts by farming peoples to control environmental factors favorable to the life cycle of domesticates, with a consequent cascade of complexly interlinked effects on regional landscapes and human society. The ongoing impacts of agropastoral landuse on natural landscapes, and their recursive social effects is a critical global issue. However, landscape evolution takes place over the course of decades, centuries, and even millennia. Even the loss of a landscape’s ability to support a people and their subsistence economy is often the result of longer term changes that are much more visible at the resolution of the prehistoric record. Only by studying this long-term record can we truly begin to appreciate the long-term consequences of past and present landuse decisions on earth’s landscapes and society, and use this understanding to make more informed decisions today. While such agropastoral impacts have been a growing focus of Mediterranean research, it has not been possible previously to systematically and quantitatively study relevant processes at the regional scales and long time spans over which they operated. Recent advances in geospatial modeling and agent simulation now make this a feasible endeavor. Our project combines these technologies in a new integrative study to use the prehistoric Mediterranean as a natural laboratory for investigating the long-term outcomes of alternate landuse practices in variable social and ecological settings. We use this laboratory to investigate three interrelated themes that are critical to understanding the long-term dynamics of Mediterranean socioecosystems: 1) the effects on biodiversity of growth in agropastoral systems; 2) the changing impacts of landuse intensification and diversification on landscapes, their resilience, and vulnerability to degregation; and 3) the long-term sustainability of human maintained socioecosystems in varying environmental and social contexts. We bring together three teams of multidisciplinary researchers who have each spent over a decade investigating long-term human ecology and landscape change in the Mediterranean and using GIS and related technology to model landuselandscape dynamics of this region, and additional experts in geospatial and agent modeling. A GIS platform dynamically integrates and links geospatial modeling of geomorphic and vegetation change with agent modeling of human landuse. The rich prehistoric/geologic/paleoecological record of this region serves to tune and validate this modeling laboratory to approximate the actual outcomes of agropastoral landuse. By focusing our study in two ecologically diverse regions, at opposite ends of the Mediterranean Basin (eastern Spain and the southern Levant in Jordan), we encompass much of the social and natural variability of the entire region and give our study broader applicability beyond our study areas. Broader Impacts: We expect our work to generate significant new knowledge about long-term consequences of alternative landuse practices that can help communities make more responsible and effective decisions about landuse today. We also have designed this project to have broader benefits beyond our research questions. Concrete products, including compiled archaeological and paleoenvironmental datasets and landuse-landscape modeling routines will be disseminated via the internet, conferences, and publications for use by researchers addressing other questions. Our work is tightly integrated with an active educational program for undergraduate and graduate students especially geared towards hands on training in the research process, and collaborative transdisciplinary work. Finally, we have developed a K-12 outreach partnership with the Arizona Geographic Alliance, with a special focus on minority outreach to poor and underserved schools. We will work with administrators and teachers to co-develop and disseminate curricula that enables science learning within the context of core requirements of the No Child Left Behind legislation. Publisher: Arizona State University Date: 2004-08-15 Coverage: Mediterranean Basin Rights and Restrictions: © June 15, 2004 By the Arizona Board of Regents. All Rights Reserved Related links: Project Web Home Page
ASU Record Identifier: asulib:3 URI for citations: http://hdl.handle.net/2286/asulib:3 |
