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SUMMARY:Geoenvironmental modeling of past socio-technological change: how 
 agriculture and deforestation came to Europe
DTSTART:20091019T161500
DTSTAMP:20260427T215737Z
UID:2363d0cb8eedc3d4b139c32b6821f5380a6cb79161decc3a6b7455e2
CATEGORIES:Conferences - Seminars
DESCRIPTION:Dr. Carsten Lemmen\, Institute for Coastal Research\, GKSS-For
 schungszentrum (DE)\nQuantifying the anthropogenic role in prehistoric lan
 d cover changes serves to establish a baseline for comparison of current h
 uman impact on the environment\, and to separate the anthropogenic impact 
 on from naturally occurring changes in our environment. I present a simple
  global mathematical model of regional socio-cultural development embedded
  in the prehistoric geoenvironmental context. The space-time evolution of 
 the transition to farming in 685 simulation regions realistically hindcast
 s the pattern of agricultural onset and its spread. Accuracy of the model 
 is tested against data on the emergence of the Neolithic in Europe\, where
  the model adds a new consistency argument that this process was driven ma
 inly by cultural diffusion (the spread of technologies and ideas) and less
  by demic diffusion (the migration and outplacement of people). Farmers in
 tensively used resources and space\, both of which were provided by widely
  forested areas in temperate regions. Using scaling parameters from the Hi
 story Database of the Global Environment (HYDE)\, simulated population den
 sity and subsistence style\, the land requirement for growing crops is est
 imated. The intrusion of cropland into potentially forested areas is evalu
 ated as carbon loss from deforestation. The land demand in important prehi
 storic growth areas leads to large-scale deforestation of up to 12% of the
  potential forest\; in total\, 27 Gt carbon are lost from forests between 
 10\,000 BC and 2000 BC and were replaced by crop land.
LOCATION:GR B3 30
STATUS:CONFIRMED
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