PARENT SESSION
Poster Session #48: Urban Ecology.
Thursday, August 8. Presentation from 8:00 AM to 9:30 AM. Exhibit Hall B & C, TCC

Agricultural perturbations and the herbaceous legacy of the prehistoric Hohokam people in Arizona.

Schaafsma, Hoski^*,1, Briggs, John¹, ¹ Arizona State University, Tempe, Arizona

ABSTRACT- Prehistoric use of the Sonoran desert created a variety of impacts on the desert environment. The prehistoric Hohokam peoples of southern Arizona actively cultivated a variety of native plants. The goal of this project is to examine abandoned Hohokam agricultural fields to determine if a legacy effect is discernible in the extant herbaceous plant community. It is hypothesized that the prehistoric growth of native herbaceous plants concentrated cultivars on the agricultural fields in quantities significantly higher than off-field locations and that these concentrations are still quantifiable now, approximately 750-800 years after the fields were abandoned. The purpose of this poster is to present the first year of a two year sampling effort. The plant community is being sampled with eight 100m x 0.5m belt transects within five fields. Eight replicate off-field transects are located in similar geographic settings. Fifty seed bank samples were collected and this information will be used to determine the potential native herbaceous community abundance on both on- and off-field locations. In addition, spatial statistics will be used to further examine the impact of the abandoned Hohokam fields on the extant herbaceous communities. Results suggest that even after approximately 750-800 years of abandonment, even low-impact agricultural practice can have a dramatic impact on modern day plant communities.

KEY WORDS: Legacy effect, Anthropogenic disturbance, Prehistoric agriculture