Elsevier

Land Use Policy

Volume 27, Issue 2, April 2010, Pages 148-160
Land Use Policy

From the Holocene to the Anthropocene: A historical framework for land cover change in southwestern South America in the past 15,000 years

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.landusepol.2009.07.006Get rights and content

Abstract

The main forest transitions that took place in south-central Chile from the end of the last glaciation to the present are reviewed here with the aim of identifying the main climatic and socio-economic drivers of land cover change. The first great transition, driven primarily by global warming, is the postglacial expansion of forests, with human populations from about 15,000 cal. yr. BP, restricted to coastlines and river basins and localized impact of forest fire. Charcoal evidence of fire increased in south-central Chile and in global records from about 12,000 to 6000 cal. yr. BP, which could be attributed at least partly to people. The subsequent expansion of agriculture led to much clearing of forests and the spread of weeds and other indicators of open habitats. The Spanish colonial period in America may have been followed by a transient expansion of forest cover into abandoned land, as indigenous population declined rapidly due to disease and slaughter. The 18th and 19th centuries brought about extensive loss of forests due to the massive impact of lumber extraction for mining operations both in central Chile and in western North America. Two centuries of intensive deforestation, coupled to grazing by cattle and extremely variable rainfall had long-lasting effects on forest cover in south-central Chile, which persist until today. The transition from a preindustrial to an industrial society brought about the “golden age” of timber harvest, assisted by mobile sawmills and railway transportation since the late 1800s. These advances led to the exhaustion of native commercial timber by the late 20th century in south-central Chile. In North America, harvestable stands were exhausted in New England and the Midwest around 1920. Settlement of the independent territories in the late 1800s and early 1900s implied vast burning and clearing of land and mounting soil erosion. Industrial forestry, based on government-subsidized massive plantations of short-rotation exotic trees, developed in the late 20th century, in connection with postindustrial displacement of exploitative activities from developed to third-world nations. In the last two decades, economic globalization and free trade promoted the expansion of new crops and further decline of woodlands, despite modest increases in forest cover. These patterns are repeated in many Latin American countries. To prevent further depletion of native forest resources and to provide an insurance against climate change, in the 21st century developing nations should aim at: (1) relocating subsidies from fiber farms to restoring diverse forest cover, (2) promoting ecosystem management of diverse forest and crops within landscapes, and (3) fostering diverse cultural relationships between people and their land.

Introduction

Today, anthropogenic land cover change (Houghton, 1994, Vitousek, 1994) is arguably the main driver of future biodiversity loss (Sala et al., 2000), disruption of ecosystem services, spread of exotic species, and pollution of land and water (Tilman, 1999, Millennium Ecosystem Assessment, 2003). Since the onset of the human enterprise, growing demands for food, timber and water drove changes in the extent, structure, and diversity of wild habitats. Yet for the most part of human history such impacts were unplanned, local and transient, and therefore rapidly reversed by ecological succession. It is only during the past few centuries that industrialized agriculture, forestry, and rapid urban and rural population growth has led to global homogenization of landscapes (Turner, 1990, Houghton, 1994, Mather et al., 1998). Because continental-scale land cover transitions occurred largely in the past two centuries, climatic, social and ecological modulators of such changes are only beginning to be understood (e.g., Mather et al., 1998, McKinney and Lockwood, 1999, Millennium Ecosystem Assessment, 2003). It seems relevant therefore to evaluate, as a case study, the relative importance of physical versus anthropogenic drivers of land transitions during the Holocene in southern South America, and discuss how can we anticipate or modify the impending outcomes of land cover trends. Such analysis is a complex challenge because of the trans-disciplinary nature of factors involved. Only through integrated social and ecological understanding, we shall develop better explanatory models to guide sensible land use policies. This integration is even more urgent in Latin America, where the fast pace of land cover change threatens one of the richest biocultural landscapes in the world (Primack et al., 2001, Rozzi et al., 2000). This biocultural diversity underlies large differences in land use patterns and modes of living.

In the developed world, forest loss has been moderated by the concentration and intensification of agricultural production and by a broader social recognition of the environmental values of forest ecosystems beyond timber production. This has led to postindustrial recovery of forest cover, reversing the trend towards deforestation that dominated through the industrial age (Mather et al., 1998, Mather et al., 2006). However, this northern hemisphere transition is coupled to increasing deforestation in many developing nations, which are now the suppliers of timber and other natural capital needed to sustain the economic growth of developed countries (Siebert, 2003). In this context, land use trends in most developing countries in the beginning of the 21st century are ultimately driven by the demands of global economy (Siebert, 2003, Liverman and Vilas, 2006). Current ecological and social effects of land cover change in the developing world can be best viewed as externalities of the prevailing global free-market economy.

Analyses of forest transitions in Chile have generally spanned only a few decades (Fuentes and Hajek, 1979, Achard et al., 2002, Echeverria et al., 2006). Here, we review the history of land cover change in south-central Chile, from the first records of human habitation, at the end of the Last Glacial Age about 15,000 calendar years before the present (cal. yr. BP) (Dillehay et al., 2008) to the present (Lara and Veblen, 1993, Donoso and Lara, 1996, Claude, 1997, Armesto et al., 1994, Armesto et al., 2001a), with the aim of identifying major transitions and their underlying climatic and socio-economic drivers. We start this review by analyzing the transition from the last glacial to the present interglacial in the mid-latitudes of western South America, which was primarily associated with global warming, forest expansion, and sparse indigenous populations of hunting-gatherers living in river basins (Dillehay et al., 2008). We show that postglacial events bear important consequences for the present latitudinal distribution of biodiversity in Chile and are relevant to assess the impacts of preindustrial and industrial land use change. Secondly, we examine pre-Hispanic forest cover transitions in south-central Chile, as human populations grew in number and diversified their agricultural and land use practices. Thirdly, we analyze the massive land transformations and deforestation beginning with the arrival of Europeans and culminating with the transition from industrial to postindustrial society. From this analysis, we propose a general framework for forest transitions in mid-latitude ecosystems of southern South America that encompasses the interval that begins in the Holocene and ends in the Anthropocene, defined by escalating human domination of global ecosystems starting in the late 19th century (Vitousek et al., 1997, Crutzen, 2002, Sanderson et al., 2002).

For the longest temporal scale, we focus on the western margin of South America, from Mediterranean to sub-Antarctic latitudes (Fig. 1A). When looking at the more recent transformations that took place from the arrival of Europeans through the mid-20th century, we focus on a more restricted area in south-central Chile, from the Mediterranean region to Chiloé Island (Fig. 1A). Our analysis of contemporary changes focuses mainly on two areas where agriculture and forestry impacts can be more precisely assessed. We rely on paleoecological data for the prehistorical events (Latorre et al., 2007) and on historical accounts for the period starting with the European settlement (Otero, 2006, Camus, 2006, Castro-Lobos, 2002, Molina et al., 2006). Recent trends over the last decades are documented by available land cover statistics (INFOR, 2005, CONAF-CONAMA-BIRF, 1999, Instituto de Estudios Públicos, 2002) and by the examination of aerial photos and satellite images. Finally, we discuss the regional and global policy implications of our analysis in the face of rapidly changing climate and socio-economic drivers.

Section snippets

Postglacial forest recovery and the pattern of tree species richness

Chilean forests presently occupy about 13.5 million hectares (CONAF-CONAMA-BIRF, 1999), along the western margin of southern South America (Fig. 1A), representing the most extensive, continuous climatic gradient from mid to high latitudes in the southern hemisphere. Vegetation records based on fossil pollen in sediments (e.g., Heusser, 1983, Villagrán, 1988, Villagrán, 1991, Villagrán et al., 1996, Moreno and Leon, 2003, Heusser et al., 2000) show that the latitudinal range of forests was

Holocene fire history

Global paleoecological studies show that in the past 20,000 years fire activity has been controlled primarily by climate and fuel load (Power et al., 2008). Records for southern South America suggest a low incidence of fire prior to the end of the last glacial period, which increased significantly during the interval between 12,000–6000 cal. yr. BP (Huber et al., 2004, Whitlock et al., 2007, Power et al., 2008, Abarzúa and Moreno, 2008, Abarzúa, 2009). Humans inhabited this region concurrently

The fuel wood catastrophe

With the arrival of Europeans, begins a period characterized by increasing rates of wood extraction from native ecosystems, mainly for the construction of villages, boats, fence posts, etc. In the following centuries, large volumes of timber were exported to the nearest and richer colonies in Peru (Camus, 2006). In addition, woodlands were cleared to open land for agriculture and livestock grazing, and intensely logged to supply fuel for domestic use and mining operations. It is estimated that

A historical framework for forest transitions

We summarized the history of land cover transitions in southwestern South America in the past 18,000 years since the LGM and examined the main climatic and human-population drivers that led to either loss or gain of vegetation cover. We used the chronosequence of events effecting Chilean forests to illustrate these transitions. The main drivers of these land cover changes and their consequences, as discussed in this paper, are summarized in Table 2. This analysis offers a broad framework for

Land use policies for the 21st century

Table 2 suggests that environmental policies born from imminent threats to public good may promote human behavior and regulations that reduce the externalities of land use. Future land policy decisions should incorporate social values and ecological factors that are presently absent from predominantly economic reasoning. New land development policies should define socially acceptable targets considering non-instrumental values, different cultural relationships between people and the land, the

Acknowledgements

Work funded by FONDAP-Fondecyt grant 1501-0001 to CASEB, Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile, by Millennium Scientific Initiative (Chile) grant P05-002 and Fondecyt PFB-23 to the Institute of Ecology and Biodiversity-Chile, and by Reforlan Project of INCO-DC, European Union, Framework 6. We thank María Uriarte and Tom Rudel for encouragement and two anonymous referees for valuable comments on the manuscript. This is a contribution to the research programs of Senda Darwin Biological

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