CAREER: Linking Upstream Land-Use Dynamics and Downstream Sedimentation

University Of Connecticut, Storrs CT

Investigators

Abstract

This Faculty Early-Career Development (CAREER) award will support an integrated research, conservation, education and outreach program that will examine the links between upstream land-use practices and downstream sedimentation across southern New England. The project will enhance basic scientific understanding of the scale of human impacts and pattern of historic land-use practices in the region, the effects of land-use practices on soils and erosion, long-term and more recent landscape change, and markers of human activity in the geologic record. The project will enhance collaborative interactions among geography, geomorphology, hydrology, archaeology, and other disciplinary approaches. As a CAREER award, the project will integrate research with education and training opportunities for undergraduate and graduate students focused on understanding the physical and environmental consequences of land-use practices and implications of continued development. The project will create new opportunities for preservation and conservation efforts related to historic cultural features within area forests, and it will promote cultural tourism by engaging the public with natural and cultural resources, educational opportunities about historic sites, and new conservation opportunities. As powerful agents of environmental change, human activities have transformed landscapes and triggered widespread soil erosion. Soil erosion has significant implications that include sediment accumulation in rivers and dams; disruption of wetland, lake, and floodplain ecosystems; and contamination. Southern New England is a dynamic landscape that preserves a dramatic transformation of widespread deforestation and agriculture followed by reforestation spanning the period from the early 17th century to the present. The investigator will use high-resolution topographic data derived from light-detection and ranging (LiDAR) measurement, soil trenches, sediment cores, and geochemistry to explore the links between human impacts on upland soils and downstream watershed sedimentation. He will quantify the spatial arrangement of historic land use; quantify local soil impacts from land-use practices; and evaluate archives of sedimentation characteristics associated with different historic land-use practices. The data collected in each area will facilitate a more holistic examination of the link between the style and duration of specific land use practices and the legacy of human impacts throughout a landscape. Although focusing on southern New England, this project will provide new information and insights that can be adapted for comparable analyses in other deglaciated regions of the United States as well as global landscapes where diverse historic land-use activities have occurred.