Davis Dylan S, Manahira George, Tucker Bram, Douglass Kristina
Columbia Climate School, Columbia University, New York, NY, USA.
Division of Biology & Paleoenvironment, Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory, New York, NY, USA.
Sci Rep. 2025 Aug 25;15(1):31160. doi: 10.1038/s41598-025-16992-5.
Historic land-use practices are important for understanding present-day patterns of ecological productivity and resilience. A longstanding challenge, however, has been how to discern different land-use activities across landscapes from archaeological and historic data. Here, we show how multispectral satellite imagery and machine learning can identify different subsistence strategies of past human land-use. Looking at coastal, southwest Madagascar, a location often cited as an example of how human land-use has degraded the island's ecosystems, we show that centuries of traditional land-use practices are positively correlated with ecosystem function. Therefore, future actions to address contemporary ecological degradation on Madagascar, and elsewhere, should consider historic land-use practices and their long-term effects on ecosystem function. Such relationships are fundamental for protecting environmental systems.
历史土地利用实践对于理解当今生态生产力和恢复力模式至关重要。然而，一个长期存在的挑战是如何从考古和历史数据中辨别不同景观中的土地利用活动。在此，我们展示了多光谱卫星图像和机器学习如何识别过去人类土地利用的不同生存策略。以马达加斯加西南部沿海地区为例，该地区常被视为人类土地利用如何使该岛生态系统退化的典型，我们发现几个世纪的传统土地利用实践与生态系统功能呈正相关。因此，未来应对马达加斯加及其他地区当代生态退化的行动应考虑历史土地利用实践及其对生态系统功能的长期影响。这种关系对于保护环境系统至关重要。
