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Environment (Results of this research (Trant said ("Future research…
Environment
Results of this research
The work found that this disposal and stockpiling of shells, as well as the people's use of fire, altered the forest through increased soil pH and important nutrients, and also improved soil drainage.
This research is the first to find long-term use of intertidal resources enhancing forest productivity.
Trant said
"Future research will involve studying more of these human-modified landscapes to understand the extent of these unexpected changes."
"These results alter the way we think about time and environmental impact,"
People enhanced the environment, not degraded it, over past 13,000 years
But new research shows that 13,000 years of repeated occupation by British Columbia's coastal First Nations has had the opposite effect, enhancing temperate rainforest productivity.
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Opinions of professors
Andrew Trant, a professor in the Faculty of Environment at the University of Waterloo, led the study in partnership with the University of Victoria and the Hakai Institute
The research combined remote-sensed, ecological and archaeological data from coastal sites where First Nations' have lived for millennia. It shows trees growing at former habitation sites are taller, wider and healthier than those in the surrounding forest.
This finding is, in large part, due to shell middens and fire.
Trant, a professor in Waterloo's School of Environment, Resources and Sustainability said
''It's incredible that in a time when so much research is showing us the negative legacies people leave behind, here is the opposite story"
"These forests are thriving from the relationship with coastal First Nations. For more than 13,000 years - 500 generations - people have been transforming this landscape. So this area that at first glance seems pristine and wild is actually highly modified and enhanced as a result of human behaviour."
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