THE BUSHARINO HILLFORT ON THE SETUN RIVER AND ITS RESOURCE AREA

В статье представлены результаты новых работ на городище Бушарино в Московской области и результаты палеоботанических исследований в его ближайших окрестностях. Удалось уточнить датировку находок на городище, скорректировать атрибуцию римской медной монеты, найденной еще в 1957 г., снять высокоточный план памятника, который относится к особому типу трехвальных городищ, не адаптированных к рельефу. Выявлены некоторые расхождения в хронологии массового материала (III в. до н. э. - III в. н. э.) и даты римской монеты (IV в.). Изучение погребенных почв под древнерусским курганом в 2 км от городища и отложений торфа в ближайшем болоте (1,5 км) позволило установить, что эти участки прошли через несколько циклов подсечного земледелия в I тыс. до н. э. - первых веках н. э., таким образом удалось достоверно зафиксировать следы земледельческой активности железного века. The paper presents results of recent studies at the Busharino hillfort in the Moscow region as well as results of paleobotanical studies in its vicinities. The chronology of finds originating from the hillfort was specified, the attribution of the Roman copper coin found back in 1957 was clarified. A high precision plan of the site was performed. The site is attributed to a special type of three-rampart hillforts not adapted to the terrain. Some discrepancies in the chronology of mass finds (3 century BC - 3 century AD) and the date of the Roman coin (4 century AD) were identified. The study of buried soils under the Medieval Russia kurgans situated two kilometers away from the hillfort as well as peat deposits in the nearest marsh (1,5 km) were undertaken. These made it possible to establish that these areas had gone through several slash-and-burn agricultural cycles in I mill. BC - first centuries AD providing, therefore, reliable evidence of agricultural activities.

TRACES OF IRON AGE SLASH-AND-BURN AGRICULTURE UNDER THE SLAVIC KURGANS AT THE MSU ZVENIGOROD BIOLOGICAL STATION

В работе представлены результаты анализа почв, погребенных под курганами XII-XIII вв. Волковской курганной группы на территории Звенигородской биостанции МГУ. На основе разработанной авторами диагностики слоев, связанных с подсечным земледелием, были проанализированы погребенные почвы и угленасыщенные горизонты под двумя курганными насыпями. Выявлены следы нескольких эпизодов подсечно-огневого земледелия; они датированы радиоуглеродным методом I, II и X веками н. э. The paper reports on the analysis of soils buried under the kurgans of the 12th - 13th centuries from the Volkovo kurgan group situated within the compound of the MSU Zvenigorod biological station. Based on the diagnostic assessment of the layers associated with slash-and-burn agriculture developed by the authors, the buried soils and the carbonaceous horizons under two kurgan mounds were examined. Traces of several instances of slash-and-burn agriculture use were identified, the radiocarbon dating puts them to the 1st, the 2nd and the 10th centuries.

Tendencias minimalistas en la gestión de los bosques tropicales mexicanos: motivaciones y experiencias

Tropical timber regions across the world share common problems such as degradation and poor regeneration after timber harvesting. Traditional Mayan land management through slash and burn is now recognized as an effective way of renewing forest stands in multispecies tropical forests. The practice of slash and burn for forest management in Mexico has led to area regulation, which has made land value a convenient means of assessing alternative forest plans. The use of expected land value as a performance indicator shifts the manager's attention from managing a species mix to balancing financial tradeoffs between liquidation or retention of the standing biomass. Since the forest-wide residual stock is so large, land value overrides the importance of revenue from timber sales. Several forest management methods along these lines have appeared in tropical regions of Mexico over a thirty-year time span and represent a patrimonial system of forest management (PS). The gradual innovation generated by PS is described here, as well as examples of PS practices. PS methods today provide stewardship for a total of 155,814 ha in different parts of Mexico. PS performance will become evident in the long run; in the meantime, the embrace of PS by private landowners and regulatory institutions is equated with a positive, independent opinion about PS design. The Mexican experience suggests pathways for rational management of all types of forests. PS features that are worth replicating are, for instance, the inclusion of disturbance patterns as factors in decision making, as well as the use of specific silvicultural regimes for roads, woodlands, closed forests, hilltops, swamps, riparian zones, clearings and forest edges.

Soil microbial interconnections along ecological restoration gradients of lowland forests after slash-and-burn agriculture

Microbial interconnections in soil are pivotal to ecosystem services and restoration. However, little is known about how soil microbial interconnections respond to slash-and-burn agriculture and to the subsequent ecosystem restoration after the practice. Here, we used amplicon sequencing and co-occurrence network analyses to explore the interconnections within soil bacterial and fungal communities in response to slash-and-burn practice and a spontaneous restoration (spanning ca. 60 years) of tropical forests after the practice, in Papua New Guinea. We found significantly higher complexity and greater variations in fungal networks than in those of bacteria, despite no significant changes observed in bacterial or fungal networks across successional stages. Within most successional stages, bacterial core co-occurrences (co-occurrences consistently present across all sub-networks in a stage) were more frequent than those of fungi, indicating higher stability of interconnections between bacteria along succession. The stable interconnections occurred frequently between bacterial taxa (i.e. Sporosarcina, Acidimicrobiale and Bacillaceae) and between ectomycorrhizal fungi (Boletaceae and Russula ochroleuca), implying important ecological roles of these taxa in the ecosystem restoration. Collectively, our results provide new insight into microbial interconnections in response to slash-and-burn agriculture and the subsequent ecosystem restoration, thus promoting a better understanding of microbial roles in ecosystem services and restoration.

Dominant drivers of runoff in a slash-and-burn affected catchment in upland Eastern Madagascar

<p>In many tropical areas slash-and-burn agriculture is an important driver of forest loss. In areas where slash-and-burn agriculture has been practiced for decades, land cover is typically a mosaic of patches of remnant forest, fields under active cultivation, fallows in various stages of regrowth (ranging from young shrub to semi-mature), and degraded fire-climax grasslands. Although runoff generation mechanisms are expected to be different for these different patches, little quantitative information is available in this regard, particularly at the catchment scale and over longer time-scales (i.e., multiple slash-and-burn cycles).</p><p>We re-instrumented a 31 ha catchment in upland Eastern Madagascar, where slash-and-burn agriculture has been practiced for more than 70 years in 2015; it had been monitored between 1963 and 1972 as well<sup>1</sup>. We measured streamflow at two locations and overland flow and soil moisture for four hillside plots (0.05 – 1.93 ha): one plot under repeatedly coppiced and burned <em>Eucalyptus</em> and three plots under young shrub and tree fallows. One of the plots underwent rudimentary terracing in the past. We analysed the rainfall-runoff dynamics for 50 rainfall events (median 12 mm, maximum 71 mm).</p><p>For 60% of the events, the stormflow coefficient (minimum contributing area) was <3%, which is the proportion of valley-bottom wetlands and rice paddies in the catchment. Stable isotope sampling for five storm runoff events indicate a maximum total event-water contribution of 16%. However, instantaneous event-water contributions were as high as 66%. The hillside plot runoff response was dominated by saturation-excess overland flow and showed strong threshold behaviour in terms of the antecedent soil moisture storage in the upper 30 cm of the soil plus the event total rainfall amount (ASI + P). Average threshold values for overland flow occurrence ranged from 87 mm for the coppiced <em>Eucalyptus</em> to 137 mm for the young fallow plots (regardless of terrace presence). Stormflow also increased after an ASI+P-threshold was exceeded (100 mm based on the soil moisture sensors for the <em>Eucalyptus</em> plot and 150 mm for the sensors at the tree fallow plots).</p><p>These results indicate an increased hydrological connectivity between hillslopes and valley bottom under wetter conditions and that stormflow in the study catchment is strongly affected by variations in seasonal rainfall. The results will be used to validate a hydrological model to determine the net effect of concurrent changes in soil infiltrability and vegetation water use associated with forest loss and recovery on stormflow totals and the seasonal flow regime.</p><p><strong><sup>1</sup></strong>Bailly, C., de Coignac, G.B., Malvos, C., Ningre, J.M., and Sarrailh, J.M. (1974). Étude de l'influence du couvert naturel et de ses modifications á Madagascar. Expérimentations en bassins versants élémentaires. Cahiers Scientifiques, 4. Centre Scientifique Forestier Tropical, Nogent-sur-Marne, France, 114 pp.</p>