Prehistoric trajectory of the triptych climate-societies-biodiversity in semi-arid Arizona (USA): a baseline for sustainable landscape management
Résumé
The specific focus on Prehistory here proposed allowed us to explore how semi-arid landscapes, apprehended as a cluster of ecosystems, responded to natural disturbances such as climate, fire or erosion. It also allowed us to trace through time landscape’s taxonomic composition (vegetation and fungal diversities), landscape organisation (mosaic structure and habitat diversity) as well as landscape temporal variability, magnitude and frequency of changes. Different tipping points have been revealed throughout the last 9 millennia. Even if these threshold periods are mainly climate-induced, this study allowed assessing both the attractiveness of these landscape changes for past societies and the effects that human activities have had on the long-term shaping of landscapes in the Verde Valley. Following this, we could discuss about the “naturalness” of such mid-arid landscapes.