Friday, February 28, 2020

"The Great Dying of the Indigenous Peoples of the Americas resulted in a human-driven global impact on the Earth System in the two centuries prior to the Industrial Revolution"............."The arrival of Europeans in the Americas in 1492 CE marks the onset of disease epidemics resulting in the loss of up to 90% of indigenous people living in the Americas over the subsequent century"............"There is wide agreement about the effects of diseases and epidemics associated with European contact".............."The first well-documented, widespread epidemic in what was to become New Mexico was smallpox in 1636"..............."Shortly thereafter, measles entered the area, and many Pueblos lost as many as a quarter of their inhabitants"................."After the founding of Spanish settlements and missions, there was substantially more contact, and throughout the 17th century, epidemic disease was repeatedly imported"................"It should be noted that Osteologic data demonstrate that native groups were most definitely not living in a pristine, disease-free environment before contact".........."Diseases such as treponemiasis and tuberculosis were already present in the New World, along with diseases such as tularemia, giardia, rabies, amebic dysentery, hepatitis, herpes, pertussis, and poliomyelitis, although the prevalence of almost all of these was probably low in any given group"............."Old World diseases that were not present in the Americas until contact include bubonic plague, measles, smallpox, mumps, chickenpox, influenza, cholera, diphtheria, typhus, malaria, leprosy, and yellow fever"............. "Indians in the Americas had no acquired immunity to these infectious diseases"..............."Europeans began to colonize North America (defined here as the United States of America and Canada) after Central and South America, thus regional and continent wide estimates are largely based on archaeological evidence, tribe-by-tribe counts and environmental carrying capacities"............ "The lower range of population estimates for North America lies between 900,000 and 2.4 million, based on tribe-by-tribe counts for the period 1600 CE to mid-1800 CE"..............."The highest estimate of 18 million, established from analyzing environmental carrying capacities, has been criticized for its assumptions on food acquisition strategies".............."More recent estimates derived from geospatial interpolation of archaeological sites range between 2.8 million and 5.7 million"................."These intermediate figures are supported by a recent comprehensive regional-scale archaeological study"

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https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0277379118307261 https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1071659/ Earth sys...
Wednesday, February 26, 2020

While there was a sizeable Indian population in eastern North America prior to European contact(circa AD1500), their impact on the land was minimal..............As Harvard Forest Director David Foster and Harvard Forest Paleoecologist W. Wyatt Oswald sum up in their recent article: “LAND MANAGERS SEEKING TO EMULATE PRE-CONTACT CONDITIONS SHOULD DE-EMPHASIZE HUMAN DISTURBANCE AND FOCUS ON DEVELOPING MATURE FORESTS".........."IN AREAS WHERE GRASSLANDS AND PASTURE ARE DESIRED (FOR EXAMPLE, TO RETAIN MODERN PATTERNS OF SPECIES DIVERSITY), COLONIAL-ERA TECHNOLOGIES FOR KEEPING LAND OPEN—SUCH AS PLOWING, GRAZING, MOWING FOR HAY, AND TREE-CUTTING—SHOULD BE USED INSTEAD OF BURNING, BECAUSE THOSE ARE THE AGRICULTURAL APPROACHES THAT CREATED THEM FOUR CENTURIES AGO" ..............Bottom line is that lake bottom sediment cores of some 12,000 years ago up to the present suggest that there were not widespread human impacts on New England landscapes before the arrival of Europeans".........."Further, It is known that while Indians at times set fires to the woods, prairie and chaparral environs they occupied, Hugh Raup a plant ecologist and Director of the Harvard Forest for 21 years, writing in 1937, "noted that Indian caused fires in the northeast were uncommon and the idea that they burned the entire New England area every year. or even every 10 to 20 years “is inconceivable" ............. As pointed out by esteemed Ecological Historian Emily Russell in her 1983 study of Indian caused fires in the northeastern United States: "There is no strong evidence that Indian purposely burned large areas of the forested northeastern United States frequently"..............."The presence of Indians did, however, undoubtedly increase the frequency of fires above the low numbers caused by lightning"................ "The increase from the 'natural' situation was greatest in local areas near Indian habitations"

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https://harvardmagazine.com/2020/01/natural-ecology-in-new-england https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2020/01/200122123700.htm ...
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Saturday, February 22, 2020

We have know for some time that both Gray and Eastern Wolves will dine on berries and kill fish during certain times of the year to augment their hoofed browser(deer, elk, moose, bison, caribou) and beaver diet........Newly discovered is that the Wolves of Voyageurs National Park in Minnesota readily also feed their newborn pups of the year regurgitated blueberries.........Interesting to know that Wolves may be more adaptable than previously thought in enjoying meat, fish and fruit—Similar to their Coyote cousins!

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https https://www.mprnews.org/story/2020/02/12/new-research-from-northern-minn-shows-wolves-feed-berries-to-their-young :// New resea...