PARENT SESSION
Wednesday, August 9, 1:30-5:00 pm
Symposium 14 - The urban food web: how humans alter the state and interactions of trophic dynamics
Cotton Row, Mezzanine Level, Cook Convention Center
Organized by: PS Warren (pswarren@forwild.umass.edu), C Tripler, C Lepczyk, and J Walker
This symposium addresses the unification of food web theory, with its classic debates over the regulation of populations and communities, and the inventive new approaches by which urban ecologists examine the dynamics of coupled social-biophysical systems.
The persistence of human legacies: consequences for plant-animal interactions linger after 1000 years of abandonment by people.
Huntly, Nancy*,1, Maschner, Herbert 1, Gilliland, Kimberly1, Knudsen, Jonathan 1, 1 Idaho State University, Pocatello, ID
ABSTRACT- The Aleut have been an integral part of the food web(s) of the North Pacific for thousands of years, and their past and continuing food-web roles can be reconstructed. The Aleut have inhabited the Lower Alaska Peninsula and nearby Aleutian islands for some 6,000 years, during which time they were primarily marine hunter-gatherers. Historic and recent resource-based economies of the Aleut have included domestic livestock and fox-farming, in addition to the continuing primary role of fishing for both subsistence and income. The ancient Aleut lived in villages of subterranean houses, ranging in sizes from a few to over 100 houses, with estimated village populations ranging from perhaps a dozen to over a thousand people, and the contemporary landscape bears the imprint of villages that have been abandoned for as along as several thousand years. Many ancient villages contain household middens, which reveal past resource use, including that of marine mammals, fishes, and intertidal invertebrates. These long-abandoned village sites have vegetation that is distinct from surrounding tundra, and they support use by different sets of animals, including herbivorous mammals, songbirds, and the predators that consume them. The imprint of past villages on the contemporary landscape appears similar for villages of all sizes, ages, and lengths of habitation. Furthermore, the contemporary assemblages of animals and plants appear to have wide-ranging effects that extend from food web dynamics to geomorphic change and ecosystem dynamics.
Key words: food web, Alaska, maritime tundra