Abstract Detail
Underutilized Crops for Secure and Green Futures Ross, Nanci J. [1]. The ecological side of an ethnobotanical coin: how long do our selective impacts on the landscape persist? Humans’ conscious and unconscious selective effect on food plants throughout history has led to outcomes that continue to echo through the landscape. Plant domestication has been a major theme in investigations of long-term legacies of human–nature interactions with significant attention given to the results of conscious selection on individual species. Recent work is exploring the impacts of utilization outside of direct management by cultivation through a variety of in situ landscape-scale management techniques. While there is extensive ethnographic literature on the legacy of ancient land use, identification of a definitive signal in the modern landscape generally requires a multidisciplinary approach integrating ecological as well as ethnographic and historical data. This integrated, multidisciplinary approach will be used to address questions of community and ecosystem level impacts of pre-Colombian food crop management as well as evaluating the potential long-term legacy of utilization and landscape management on the evolution of “forgotten” crop species.
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1 - Drake University, Biology Department, Olin Hall Room 208, 1344 27th Street, Des Moines, IA, 50311, USA
Keywords:
ethnobotany
unconscious selection
legacies
historical ecology
land-use history
in situ management.
Presentation Type: Symposium Presentation
Session: SY08
Location: Salon 17/18/The Shaw Conference Centre
Date: Tuesday, July 28th, 2015
Time: 8:15 AM
Number: SY08002
Abstract ID:971
Candidate for Awards:None | 
