Forest Transformation in the Wake of Colonization: The Quijos Andean Amazonian Flank, Past and Present

Forest transformation modified the Quijos’ ancient mountainscapes in three ways: scientific approximation, entrepreneurial investing, and community engagement. We concentrate the study in the Cumandá Protected Forest reserve as exemplar in the Quijos valley. Our objective is to understand forest transition trends and prospects of sustainability by answering qualitative research questions of impact on cloud forest vegetation from a socioecological standpoint. We used ethnographic work, personal interviews, surveys to the community, and queries to authorities; our qualitative methods included critical discourse analyses, onomastic interpretation, and matrix comparison for ecological legacies, focused on three sectors of the economy that we posit impacted these forests, all indicative of a more competitive, globalized framework: forest tourism, retreating forest frontier, and mining forested watersheds. We found that these sectors also helped alleviate poverty in local communities so that ecotourism, non-traditional forest product harvest, and subsistence mining of water could become stewards, despite the fact that such a nuanced approach has not yet been fully implemented by local governments. We conclude that Hostería Cumandá promotes new conservation narratives in positive ways, since it fuels grassroots organizations to incorporate nature conservation into restoration ecology efforts, provides studies on mountain forest species of concern in the area, generates local employment, and converts a transitory, ephemeral attraction into an international tourism destination.

Memory over matter?—a conceptual framework to integrate social–ecological l legacies in agricultural NCP co-production

To better account for how social–ecological legacies of social and ecological systems jointly shape the current composition, the quality and quantity of nature’s contribution to people (NCPs), we integrate the concept of NCP co-production into social–ecological system thinking. Our expanded framework highlights how NCP co-production is frequently entangled within its social–ecological context, such as legacies, current resources and social activities. Additionally, we underline the relevance of non-material and material dimensions of resources in NCP co-production. To illustrate the potential of this expanded framework, we explore its application to an agricultural system of the French Northern Alps. We conclude that this framework (1) facilitates the understanding of society–ecosystem interactions in a specific regional social–ecological context; (2) helps to better conceptualise the interdependencies between resources and social activities; (3) demonstrates how current rule sets to organise social–ecological legacies affect the entire NCP co-production chain. The framework’s further implementation requires more research to better understand the complex interlinkages between the social and the ecological subsystems that underpin socioeconomic activities.

Fine-Scale NDVI Reconstruction Back to 1906 from Tree-Rings in the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem

Global warming and related disturbances, such as drought, water, and heat stress, are causing forest decline resulting in regime shifts. Conventional studies have combined tree-ring width (TRW) and the normalized difference vegetation index (NDVI) to reconstruct NDVI values and ignored the influences of mixed land covers. We built an integrated TRW-NDVI model and reconstructed the annual NDVI maps by using 622 Landsat satellite images and tree cores from 15 plots using point-by-point regression. Our model performed well in the study area, as demonstrated by significant reconstructions for 71.14% (p < 0.05) of the area with the exclusion of water and barren areas. The error rate between the reconstructed NDVI using the conventional approach and our approach could reach 10.36%. The 30 m resolution reconstructed NDVI images in the recent 100 years clearly displayed a decrease in vegetation density and detected decades-long regime shifts from 1906 to 2015. Our study site experienced five regime shifts, markedly the 1930s and 1950s, which were megadroughts across North America. With fine resolution maps, regime shifts could be observed annually at the centennial scale. They can also be used to understand how the Yellowstone ecosystem has gradually changed with its ecological legacies in the last century.

Land use and social-ecological legacies of Rio de Janeiro's Atlantic urban forests: from charcoal production to novel ecosystems

Historical ecology is an important tool in deciphering human–environment interactions imprinted on landscapes throughout time. However, gaps of knowledge still remain regarding the land use legacies hidden in the current Atlantic Forest landscape; and also regarding how this information can help management of the remaining forest cover. The social-ecological systems framework was applied to understand charcoal production in the urban forests of Rio de Janeiro, from the nineteenth to mid-twentieth century, and their current social-ecological legacies. Charcoal production carried out by former enslaved populations, allowed for rapid forest regeneration. Forest thinning instead of forest felling was carried out by small groups in these urban remnant forests, sparing large native trees and facilitating natural regeneration. Currently, more than one thousand former charcoal production sites are accounted for hidden underneath the forest cover. The forest landscape of today is a result of novel forest successional trajectories that recovered structural and functional attributes of the forest ecosystem. However, this came at the cost of social invisibility and marginalization of these populations. The management practices of charcoal production dispersed in the landscape is one of Rio de Janeiro's most important, albeit hidden, land use legacies. Currently, the forested landscape is comprised of regenerated forests, both structurally and functionally sound, though with significant changes in species composition including the introduction of exotic species throughout recent centuries. These urban forests are today a complex mosaic of novel ecosystems, with rich biocultural diversity, and together with managed lands and well conserved forest tracts, provide not only livelihood and sustenance for forest dwelling families, but also important ecosystem services for the entire population of Rio de Janeiro. We believe that these concepts and frameworks can offer practical solutions for urban forest management, taking into account the biocultural diversity of Rio de Janeiro, increasing awareness of sustainability and promoting food security.

Plant species richness at archaeological sites suggests ecological legacy of Indigenous subsistence on the Colorado Plateau

Humans have both intentional and unintentional impacts on their environment, yet identifying the enduring ecological legacies of past small-scale societies remains difficult, and as such, evidence is sparse. The present study found evidence of an ecological legacy that persists today within an semiarid ecosystem of western North America. Specifically, the richness of ethnographically important plant species is strongly associated with archaeological complexity and ecological diversity at Puebloan sites in a region known as Bears Ears on the Colorado Plateau. A multivariate model including both environmental and archaeological predictors explains 88% of the variation in ethnographic species richness (ESR), with growing degree days and archaeological site complexity having the strongest effects. At least 31 plant species important to five tribal groups (Navajo, Hopi, Zuni, Ute Mountain Ute, and Apache), including the Four Corners potato (Solanum jamesii), goosefoot (Chenopodium sp.), wolfberry (Lycium pallidum), and sumac (Rhus trilobata), occurred at archaeological sites, despite being uncommon across the wider landscape. Our results reveal a clear ecological legacy of past human behavior: even when holding environmental variables constant, ESR increases significantly as a function of past investment in habitation and subsistence. Consequently, we suggest that propagules of some species were transported and cultivated, intentionally or not, establishing populations that persist to this day. Ensuring persistence will require tribal input for conserving and restoring archaeo-ecosystems containing “high-priority” plant species, especially those held sacred as lifeway medicines. This transdisciplinary approach has important implications for resource management planning, especially in areas such as Bears Ears that will experience greater visitation and associated impacts in the near future.

Re-Thinking Memory and Transitional Justice: A Novel Application of Ecological Memory

While transitional justice processes call upon individuals and societies to recall and remember, memory practices – and more specifically the frequent politicisation of memory in transitional societies – can undermine transitional justice goals, including peace and reconciliation. This interdisciplinary article seeks to re-think the relationship between transitional justice and memory. It does so by introducing the concept of ecological memory, a supra-political form of memory centred on complex ecosystem responses to disturbance events and the development of resilience to future shocks and stressors. Transposing the concept of ecological memory to the novel context of transitional justice can ultimately foster a new alignment between memory and transitional justice that is more conducive to the realisation of the latter’s core goals. Drawing on empirical data, the article seeks to demonstrate that transitional justice processes can contribute to fostering ecological memory by giving attention to the ecological legacies of war crimes and human rights violations.