PARENT SESSION
Symposium #28: Can Human Cultural Activities be Included in Reference Ecosystems?.

Organized by: D Martinez
Thursday, August 8. 9:00 AM to 11:30 AM. Maricopa Meeting Room, TCC.

Prehistoric cultural influences on the landscape of the Jemez Mountains, New Mexico.

Allen, Craig^*,1, ¹ US Geological Survey, Los Alamos, NM

ABSTRACT- Large human populations have inhabited the landscape of the Jemez Mountains of New Mexico (USA) for at least the past 800 years. Multiple lines of evidence are reviewed to assess the potential effects of aboriginal people on ecological patterns and processes in this landscape. Abundant lightning ignitions sufficiently explain the frequency, extent, seasonality, and climate relationships of prehistoric fire patterns reconstructed from a large network of fire-scarred trees. While there is scant evidence of landscape-scale aboriginal burning here, people certainly used fire and limited indications of possible localized enhancement of fire ignitions have been found at several tree-ring sites. Extensive archeological, ethnographic, and paleoecological data indicate substantial prehistoric modification of peripheral portions of the Jemez country by farming, hunting, wood procurement, and habitations. In particular, extensive areas of pinyon-juniper woodland may still be recovering from deforestation by ancestral Puebloans before AD 1550, although geomorphic evidence does not support the view that their agricultural activities greatly accelerated broad-scale soil erosion. Past and present landscape patterns in the Jemez Mountains involve interactions among both natural and cultural histories, resulting in dynamic gradients of 'wildness' that defy easy categorization or generalization. Thoughts are presented on how evidence of cultural landscape modifications can affect management of natural resources today, including ecosystem restoration within designated wilderness areas.

KEY WORDS: environmental history, reference conditions, fire