Landscapes and Identities

This chapter pulls together the themes of the volume as a whole, looking back at the nature of the evidence, providing a synthesis of landscape use and considering again issues of identities. We review the nature of our evidence, as well as the possibilities and difficulties posed by working with large amounts of information. We review the broader differences found across England, either side of a line roughly from Torquay to Whitby, where south and east of that line more settlements and artefacts occurred than north and west. These differences indicate long-term contrasts in ways of life in both areas. We end by considering the complex question of identities, taking seriously issues of scale. An English identity was produced through a political project in the early medieval period and would not have existed in this form earlier.

Mesocarnivore landscape use along a gradient of urban, rural, and forest cover

Mesocarnivores fill a vital role in ecosystems through effects on community health and structure. Anthropogenic-altered landscapes can benefit some species and adversely affect others. For some carnivores, prey availability increases with urbanization, but landscape use can be complicated by interactions among carnivores as well as differing human tolerance of some species. We used camera traps to survey along a gradient of urban, rural, and forest cover to quantify how carnivore landscape use varies among guild members and determine if a species was a human exploiter, adapter, or avoider. Our study was conducted in and around Corvallis, Oregon from April 2018 to February 2019 (11,914 trap nights) using 47 camera trap locations on a gradient from urban to rural. Our focal species were bobcat (Lynx rufus), coyote (Canis latrans), gray fox (Urocyon cinereoargenteus), opossum (Didelphis virginiana), raccoon (Procyon lotor), and striped skunk (Mephitis mephitis). Raccoon and opossum were human exploiters with low use of forest cover and positive association with urban and rural developed areas likely due to human-derived resources as well as some refugia from larger predators. Coyote and gray fox were human adapters with high use of natural habitats while the effects of urbanization ranged from weak to indiscernible. Bobcat and striped skunk appeared to be human avoiders with negative relationship with urban cover and higher landscape use of forest cover. We conducted a diel temporal activity analysis and found mostly nocturnal activity within the guild, but more diurnal activity by larger-bodied predators compared to the smaller species. Although these species coexist as a community in human-dominated landscapes throughout much of North America, the effects of urbanization were not equal across species. Our results, especially for gray fox and striped skunk, are counter to research in other regions, suggesting that mesopredator use of urbanized landscapes can vary depending on the environmental conditions of the study area and management actions are likely to be most effective when decisions are based on locally derived data.