Land Use Legacies in Agroecosystems

Laugier, Elise Jakoby, Hanover NH

Investigators

Abstract

This award is funded in whole or in part under the American Rescue Plan Act of 2021 (Public Law 117-2). This award was provided as part of NSF's Social, Behavioral and Economic Sciences Postdoctoral Research Fellowships (SPRF) program. The goal of the SPRF program is to prepare promising, early career doctoral-level scientists for scientific careers in academia, industry or private sector, and government. SPRF awards involve two years of training under the sponsorship of established scientists and encourage Postdoctoral Fellows to perform independent research. NSF seeks to promote the participation of scientists from all segments of the scientific community, including those from underrepresented groups, in its research programs and activities; the postdoctoral period is considered to be an important level of professional development in attaining this goal. Each Postdoctoral Fellow must address important scientific questions that advance their respective disciplinary fields. Under the sponsorship of Dr. Dan Cabanes at Rutgers University, this postdoctoral fellowship award supports an early career scientist investigating land use legacies in agroecosystems. Agricultural land use is one of the most powerful anthropogenic forces influencing Earth’s systems. Although most historical scientists agree that agriculture has been shaping landscapes for millennia, it remains difficult to quantify the timing and intensity of past land use as well as its long term (legacy) effects. The lack of clarity concerning past land use not only obscures our understanding of past human-environment relationships, it also impairs our collective ability to understand the long-term resilience capacities of vital ecosystem functions with real-world consequences for modern populations. This research advances human-environmental interaction research by examining the effects of known historical agricultural land use (legacies) on modern soil microbotanicals (phytoliths) and establishing the quantitative relationships between them. The project combines geospatial, geochemical, paleoenvironmental, and ethnographic methods as part of an integrated approach. The research take place where this is continuous records of agriculture and is ideal for examining the long-term dynamics of semi-arid agroecosystems. The overall goal of this research is not only to define the precision with which phytoliths can be used to investigate ancient land use, but also to empower future research by unlocking a potentially valuable source of information on human-environmental interactions. This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.