NSF Award Abstract - #0119819

AWSFL008-DS3

BE/CNH: Human Ecodynamics in the Hawaiian Ecosystem, 1200 to 200 Years Before
the Present

Abstract

The project will study the complex, dynamic interactions between an isolated human population and its natural environment over the course of 1,000 years, focusing on two sample landscapes in the Hawaiian Islands (specifically, Maui and Hawaii Islands). Four main research themes motivate this research: (1) determining how processes of agricultural development were linked to geomorphological and biogeochemical mosaics and gradients; (2) assessing the dynamic links between human population growth and agricultural development and intensification; (3) tracking emerging sociocultural complexity in relation to demographic growth and agricultural change; and (4) understanding how a growing human population, with an intensive agricultural economic base, affected the natural resource base. The project is multidisciplinary, and will involve collaborative fieldwork by a team of scientists representing the disciplines of archaeology, soil science, ecology, demography, and paleobotany. Fieldwork will build upon prior intensive archaeological, ecological, and pedological research by team members, but will emphasize new, integrative work on biogeochemical variation across the study landscapes, and on acquiring additional paleo-demographic and paleobotanical data necessary to address the research themes noted above. The varied data sets will be integrated using a geographic information systems approach, and hierarchical modeling will be used to test hypotheses regarding human-environment interactions over time.

The project focuses on the Hawaiian Islands because this archipelago offers unique opportunities to constrain the analysis of human-environment interactions (e.g., short time scale, isolation, pronounced biogeochemical gradients). The issues to be addressed, however, are global. The cultural and natural evolutionary processes to be studied--such as unprecedented population growth, widespread deforestation, soil degradation through nutrient depletion, population migrations into marginal lands, and increased political and economic centralization and control--are all taking place today on a global scale. By studying these processes on a controlled time scale of approximately 1,000 years, this research will produce dynamic models of the causal links between such key factors, models which can help us to understand the irreversible environmental and cultural changes driven by the coupling of human and natural systems. Such models should be of considerable relevance to on-going attempts to develop sustainable human ecosystems. The results of this project will therefore be of wide interest to a range of disciplines, including ecology, demography, anthropology, economics, and biogeography. This project is an award emanating from the FY2001 special competition in Biocomplexity in the Environment focusing on the Dynamics of Coupled Natural and Human Systems.