Overview

In spite of millennia of anthropogenic landscape change, the western Mediterranean has maintained productive rural landscapes and supported dense urban populations for millennia. In many respects, the western Mediterranean embodies fundamental questions of sustainability: How can the earth sustain a human population rapidly growing toward 10 billion and not only maintain human life but also quality of life? How can we successfully manage a continually changing landscape driven by interacting human and natural forces to make this goal possible? This project has worked to answer such questions through research on the emergence and subsequent dynamics of coupled natural and human landscapes in the western Mediterranean. It seeks a better understanding of how social and biophysical systems became so closely coupled, and the cascade of consequences from this coupling.

To achieve these broader goals, this project carried out an integrative, interdisciplinary program of field and laboratory research to collect and analyze archaeological and paleoecological data from intensive study regions in Spain and Italy. Analysis of the materials collected during fieldwork enabled the reconstruction of long-term dynamics of land use practices and landscape consequences. These empirical data were augmented by computational modeling experiments on the recursive processes that drive human and natural landscape dynamics using a unique laboratory of dynamically coupled model components to represent small-holder farmer/herder decision making, land use, anthropogenic and natural fire, vegetation community succession, and multi-dimensional landscape evolution. The empirical data also helps validate model results, especially through an innovative protocol to generate digital proxy data that can be directly compared with empirical data sets.

This project has supported the work of numerous graduate and undergraduates in the US, Canada, and Spain. It has supported one MA thesis, four completed PhD dissertations and two still in progress, and two postdoctoral scholars.

This highly interdisciplinary project exemplifies how coupled natural and human (CNH) systems research requires scientists with diverse and complementary expertise to collaborate to address important, complex issues. It also shows how historical sciences like archaeology and paleoecology, in combination with computational modeling can inform the present and help us navigate challenges of the future. It further demonstrates the importance of developing integrative science that treats human and biophysical phenomena as a single, complexly intertwined system. This is especially important to more accurately plan for future change in global CNH systems.

Publications and Presentations of Results

 The results of the research carried out in this project have been reported in numerous journal publications, book chapters, and presentations at scientific meetings. These are all listed in current and previous reports to NSF and compiled on the project web site at http://medland.asu.edu. A few key papers are listed below.

Snitker, G. (2018). Identifying natural and anthropogenic drivers of prehistoric fire regimes through simulated charcoal records. Journal of Archaeological Science, 95, 1?15. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jas.2018.04.009

Robinson, D. T., Di Vittorio, A., Alexander, P., Arneth, A., Barton, C. M., Brown, D. G., ... Verburg, P. H. (2018). Modelling feedbacks between human and natural processes in the land system. Earth System Dynamics, 9(2), 895?914. https://doi.org/10.5194/esd-9-895-2018

Snitker, G., Castillo, A. D., Barton, C. M., Aubán, J. B., García-Puchol, O., & Pardo-Gordó, S. (2018). Patch-based survey methods for studying prehistoric human land-use in agriculturally modified landscapes: A case study from the Canal de Navarr?s, eastern Spain. Quaternary International, 483, 5?22. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.quaint.2018.01.034

Pardo-Gordó, S., Bergin, S. M., Bernabeu Aubán, J., & Barton, C. M. (2017). Alternative Stories of Agricultural Origins: The Neolithic Spread in the Iberian Peninsula. In O. García-Puchol & D. C. Salazar-García (Eds.), Times of Neolithic Transition along the Western Mediterranean (pp. 101?131). https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-52939-4_5

Barton, C.M., Ullah, I.I.T., Bergin, S.M., Sarjoughian, H.S., Mayer, G.R., Bernabeu-Auban, J.E., Heimsath, A.M., Acevedo, M.F., Riel-Salvatore, J.G., Arrowsmith, Jr., (2016). Experimental socioecology: Integrative science for Anthropocene landscape dynamics. Anthropocene 13: 34-45.

Barton, C. Michael, Isaac Ullah, & Arjun Heimsath (2015). How to Make a Barranco: Modeling Erosion and Land-Use in Mediterranean Landscapes. Land 4(3): 578?606. https://doi.org/10.3390/land4030578.

Bernabeu Aubán, J., Barton, C. M., Pardo Gordó, S., & Bergin, S. M (2015). Modeling initial Neolithic dispersal. The first agricultural groups in West Mediterranean. Ecological Modelling, 307, 22?31. http://doi.org/10.1016/j.ecolmodel.2015.03.015

Illustrations

1. Map showing intensive study field areas

2. Schematic of modeling laboratory

3. Photos of fieldwork

4. Charcoal and phytolith data from sediment column from eastern Spain

5. Map of soil erosion and deposition (cool colors) from modeling 300 years of small holder farming and herding in eastern Spain

Last Modified: 02/28/2020
Modified by: C Michael Barton