Long-Term Human Ecodynamics in Coastal Peru: A Case Study of Polar-Tropical Teleconnections

Harvard University, Cambridge MA

Investigators

Abstract

This research on adaptation to rapid climate change in Peru will be a case study of how polar processes affect regions far from the poles but are strongly influenced by polar events. The research team will use their established research collaborations with interdisciplinary organizations such as the Global Human Ecodynamics Alliance (GHEA) and the Climate Change Institute to link these tropical changes to the Antarctic and Arctic. The project goal is to understand the impact of climate change on human social systems by addressing long-standing questions on human-environmental interactions over long periods of time. This will be done by combining cutting-edge technology in the form of multi-spectral, photographic and other forms of imagery on a GIS platform that will allow for modeling of how the environment changed through time. This laboratory-based research will be linked in a feed-back loop with on-the-ground investigation of evidence of such changes. Changes include both short, punctuated, and long-term events and cycles of change, as well as unique events. The project will marry culture-historical and particularist research on ancient, historic, and contemporary human actions with generalizing, scientific research. The research will investigate how societies in specific times and places were aware of such events and how they may or may not have prepared for them. In addition, the research will chronicle the degree to which these societies were resilient or not in reaction to these varying environmental and climatic changes. There has not previously been an attempt to document these changes at this scale from earliest times through to the current era. We believe that only by studying the full range of human habitation and responses to environmental change will we be able to successfully understand how these two forces interacted. This project is potentially transformative research. It will be a complete re-synthesis of archival data; fieldwork data; and modeling of polar-tropical human ecodynamic systems. This project may be the first major reassessment of such a large collection of interdisciplinary legacy materials. As such, it has the potential to make major theoretical and methodological contributions to a number of diverse scientific disciplines, but more importantly will underscore the need for thinking in new ways about geographic boundaries when assessing human ecodynamic processes.