Ecological consequences of post-Columbian indigenous depopulation in the Andean–Amazonian corridor

Nicholas Loughlin, William D. Gosling, Patricia Mothes, Encarni Montoya

Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

48 Citations (Scopus)

Abstract

European colonization of South America instigated a continental-scale depopulation of its indigenous peoples. The impact of depopulation on the tropical forests of South America varied across the continent. Furthermore, the role that indigenous peoples played in transforming the biodiverse tropical forests of the Andean–Amazonian corridor before AD 1492 remains unknown. Here, we reconstruct the past 1,000  years of changing human impact on the cloud forest of Ecuador at a key trade route, which connected the Inkan Empire to the peoples of Amazonia. We compare this historical landscape with the pre-human arrival (around 44,000–42,000 years ago) and modern environments. We demonstrate that intensive land-use within the cloud forest before European arrival deforested the landscape to a greater extent than modern (post-AD 1950) cattle farming. Intensive indigenous land-use ended abruptly around AD 1588 following a catastrophic population decline. Forest succession then took around 130  years to establish a structurally intact forest—one comparable to that which occurred before the arrival of the first humans to the continent. We show that nineteenth-century descriptions of the Andean–Amazonian corridor as a pristine wilderness record a shifted ecological baseline—one that less than 250  years earlier had consisted of a heavily managed and cultivated landscape.
Original languageEnglish
Pages (from-to)1233-1236
Number of pages4
JournalNature Ecology & Evolution
Volume2
Issue number8
Early online date16 Jul 2018
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - 1 Aug 2018
Externally publishedYes

Keywords

  • Environmental impact
  • Forest ecology
  • Palaeoecology
  • Tropical ecology

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