- Author
-
R.K. Sales
C.N.H. McMichael
S.G.A. Flantua
K. Hagemans
J.R. Zondervan
C. González-Arango
W.B. Church
M.B. Bush - Date
- 25-4-2022
- Title
- Potential distributions of pre-Columbian people in Tropical Andean landscapes
- Journal
- Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B - Biological Sciences
- Volume | Issue number
- 377 | 1849
- Article number
- 20200502
- Number of pages
- 11
- Document type
- Article
- Faculty
- Faculty of Science (FNWI)
- Institute
- Institute for Biodiversity and Ecosystem Dynamics (IBED)
- Abstract
-
Much has yet to be learned of the spatial patterning of pre-Columbian people across the Tropical Andes. Using compiled archaeological data and a suite of environmental variables, we generate an ensemble species distribution model (SDM) that incorporates general additive models, random forest models and Maxent models to reconstruct spatial patterns of pre-Columbian people that inhabited the Tropical Andes east of the continental divide, within the modern countries of Bolivia, Peru and Ecuador. Within this region, here referred to as the eastern Andean flank, elevation, mean annual cloud frequency, distance to rivers and precipitation of the driest quarter are the environmental variables most closely related to human occupancy. Our model indicates that 11.04% of our study area (65 368 km2) was likely occupied by pre-Columbian people. Our model shows that 30 of 351 forest inventory plots, which are used to generate ecological understanding of Andean ecosystems, were likely occupied in the pre-Columbian period. In previously occupied sites, successional trajectories may still be shaping forest dynamics, and those forests may still be recovering from the ecological legacy of pre-Columbian impacts. Our ensemble SDM links palaeo- and neo-ecology and can also be used to guide both future archaeological and ecological studies. This article is part of the theme issue 'Tropical forests in the deep human past'.
- URL
- go to publisher's site
- Language
- English
- Note
- With supplementary materials
- Related dataset
- Archaeological sites used in the final ensemble model from Potential distributions of pre-Columbian people in Tropical Andean landscapes
- Related dataset
- Archaeological sites used in the final ensemble model from Potential distributions of pre-Columbian people in Tropical Andean landscapes
- Persistent Identifier
- https://hdl.handle.net/11245.1/a154072a-16d5-4093-aa88-7d9c90fe946e
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