Ecological consequences of post-Columbian indigenous depopulation in the Andean–Amazonian corridor

Loughlin, Nicholas, Gosling, William, Mothes, Patricia and Montoya, Encarni (2018) Ecological consequences of post-Columbian indigenous depopulation in the Andean–Amazonian corridor. Nature Ecology & Evolution, 2 (8). pp. 1233-1236. ISSN 2397-334X

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Abstract

European colonization of South America instigated a continental-scale depopulation of its indigenous peoples. The impact of depopulation on the tropical forests of South America varied across the continent. Furthermore, the role that indigenous peoples played in transforming the biodiverse tropical forests of the Andean–Amazonian corridor before AD 1492 remains unknown. Here, we reconstruct the past 1,000  years of changing human impact on the cloud forest of Ecuador at a key trade route, which connected the Inkan Empire to the peoples of Amazonia. We compare this historical landscape with the pre-human arrival (around 44,000–42,000 years ago) and modern environments. We demonstrate that intensive land-use within the cloud forest before European arrival deforested the landscape to a greater extent than modern (post-AD 1950) cattle farming. Intensive indigenous land-use ended abruptly around AD 1588 following a catastrophic population decline. Forest succession then took around 130  years to establish a structurally intact forest—one comparable to that which occurred before the arrival of the first humans to the continent. We show that nineteenth-century descriptions of the Andean–Amazonian corridor as a pristine wilderness record a shifted ecological baseline—one that less than 250  years earlier had consisted of a heavily managed and cultivated landscape.

Item Type:	Article
Uncontrolled Keywords:	Environmental impact, Forest ecology, Palaeoecology, Tropical ecology
Subjects:	F800 Physical and Terrestrial Geographical and Environmental Sciences L700 Human and Social Geography
Department:	Faculties > Engineering and Environment > Geography and Environmental Sciences
Depositing User:	Ellen Cole
Date Deposited:	28 May 2019 10:47
Last Modified:	10 Oct 2019 16:46
URI:	http://nrl.northumbria.ac.uk/id/eprint/38698

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