Cultural, environmental and historical controls of vegetation patterns and the modern conservation setting on the island of Martha's Vineyard, USA

Aim  Long‐term studies of landscape dynamics in relationship to changes in cultural, environmental and disturbance factors have great potential for increasing the understanding of modern ecological conditions and improving the development of conservation plans that incorporate historically important processes. In this study we compiled archaeological, historical, palaeoecological and ecological information on Martha's Vineyard to investigate temporal and spatial variation in landscape pattern and process. Although <250 km2, this island off the Massachusetts coast embraces remarkable geographical variation and harbours uncommon plant and animal assemblages that make it a national priority for conservation.

[1]  G. B..  Memoirs of the Boston Society of Natural History , 1919, Nature.

[2]  T. W. H..  Chemical Analysis , 2019, Nature.

[3]  R. Lukens.  United States Coast and Geodetic Survey , 1934 .

[4]  J. Pannell.  THE HEATH HEN. , 1943, Science.

[5]  A. Flexner.  Coast and Geodetic Survey , 1943 .

[6]  G. M. Day.  The Indian as an Ecological Factor in the Northeastern Forest , 1953 .

[7]  M. Westveld.  Natural Forest Vegetation Zones of New England , 1956 .

[8]  K. Faegri,et al.  Textbook of Pollen Analysis , 1965 .

[9]  L. Brubaker.  Postglacial Forest Patterns Associated with till and Outwash in Northcentral Upper Michigan , 1975, Quaternary Research.

[10]  R. Clark.  Point count estimation of charcoal in pollen preparations and thin sections of sediments , 1982 .

[11]  William Cronon,et al.  Changes in the Land , 1983 .

[12]  E. Grimm.  CHRONOLOGY AND DYNAMICS OF VEGETATION CHANGE IN THE PRAIRIE‐WOODLAND REGION OF SOUTHERN MINNESOTA, U.S.A. * , 1983 .

[13]  E. Grimm.  Fire and Other Factors Controlling the Big Woods Vegetation of Minnesota in the Mid‐Nineteenth Century , 1984 .

[14]  William Cronon,et al.  Changes in the land : Indians, colonists, and the ecology of New England , 1984 .

[15]  I. Prentice.  Pollen Representation, Source Area, and Basin Size: Toward a Unified Theory of Pollen Analysis , 1985, Quaternary Research.

[16]  Michael D. Green.  Changes in the Land: Indians, Colonists and the Ecology of New England. By William Cronon. (New York: Hill and Wang, 1983. x + 241 pp. Notes and bibliographical essay. $15.95 cloth; $6.95 paper.) , 1985 .

[17]  E. Grimm.  CONISS: a FORTRAN 77 program for stratigraphically constrained cluster analysis by the method of incremental sum of squares , 1987 .

[18]  W. A. Patterson,et al.  Fire and disease history of forests , 1988 .

[19]  P. W. Dunwiddie,et al.  Forest and Heath: The Shaping of the Vegetation on Nantucket Island , 1989, Journal of Forest History.

[20]  S. Jackson,et al.  Pollen source area and representation in small lakes of the northeastern United States , 1990 .

[21]  M. Binford,et al.  Calculation and uncertainty analysis of 210Pb dates for PIRLA project lake sediment cores , 1990 .

[22]  D. Bernstein.  Trends in Prehistoric Subsistence on the Southern New England Coast: The View from Narragansett Bay , 1991 .

[23]  W. Denevan.  The Pristine Myth: The Landscape of the Americas in 1492 , 1992 .

[24]  Jeffrey Bendremer.  Late Woodland settlement and subsistence in eastern Connecticut , 1993 .

[25]  S. Sugita.  A Model of Pollen Source Area for an Entire Lake Surface , 1993, Quaternary Research.

[26]  S. Sugita.  Pollen Representation of Vegetation in Quaternary Sediments: Theory and Method in Patchy Vegetation , 1994 .

[27]  A. Stevens.  The paleoecology of coastal sandplain grasslands on Martha's Vineyard, Massachusetts , 1996 .

[28]  David R. Foster,et al.  ECOLOGY AND CONSERVATION IN T'HE CULTURAL LANDSCAPE OF NEW ENGLAND: LESSONS FROM NATURE'S HISTORY , 1998 .

[29]  Yasuhide Kawashima.  Native People of Southern New England, 1500-1650 , 1998 .

[30]  David R. Foster,et al.  Land-Use History as Long-Term Broad-Scale Disturbance: Regional Forest Dynamics in Central New England , 1998, Ecosystems.

[31]  D. Foster,et al.  Impact of Human Activity on Regional Forest Composition and Dynamics in Central New England , 1998, Ecosystems.

[32]  E. Chilton.  Mobile Farmers of Pre-Contact Southern New England: The Archaeological and Ethnohistoric Evidence , 1999 .

[33]  Julio L. Betancourt,et al.  APPLIED HISTORICAL ECOLOGY: USING THE PAST TO MANAGE FOR THE FUTURE , 1999 .

[34]  D. Foster,et al.  A Historical Perspective on Pitch Pine–Scrub Oak Communities in the Connecticut Valley of Massachusetts , 1999, Ecosystems.

[35]  Frederick J. Swanson,et al.  OVERVIEW OF THE USE OF NATURAL VARIABILITY CONCEPTS IN MANAGING ECOLOGICAL SYSTEMS , 1999 .

[36]  D. Foster,et al.  Anthropogenic ties to late-successional structure and composition in four new England hemlock stands. , 2000 .

[37]  D. Foster.  Conservation lessons & challenges from ecological history. , 2000 .

[38]  J. O'keefe,et al.  New England Forests Through Time : Insights from the Harvard Forest Dioramas , 2000 .

[39]  Emery R. Boose,et al.  LANDSCAPE AND REGIONAL IMPACTS OF HURRICANES IN NEW ENGLAND , 2001 .

[40]  E. Chilton.  The archaeology and ethnohistory of the contact period in the northeastern united states , 2001 .

[41]  David R. Foster,et al.  Thoreau’s Country: Journey through a Transformed Landscape , 2001 .

[42]  D. Foster,et al.  Fire on the New England landscape: regional and temporal variation, cultural and environmental controls , 2002 .

[43]  E. Chilton.  "towns they have none"': Diverse subsistence and settlement strategies in native New England , 2002 .

[44]  D. Foster,et al.  Grasslands, heathlands and shrublands in coastal New England: historical interpretations and approaches to conservation , 2002 .

[45]  D. Tilman,et al.  The Importance of Land-Use Legacies to Ecology and Conservation , 2003 .

[46]  D. Foster,et al.  CONSERVATION OF CHANGING LANDSCAPES: VEGETATION AND LAND‐USE HISTORY OF CAPE COD NATIONAL SEASHORE , 2003 .

[47]  David R. Foster,et al.  LONG‐TERM HISTORY OF VEGETATION AND FIRE IN PITCH PINE–OAK FORESTS ON CAPE COD, MASSACHUSETTS , 2003 .

[48]  B. Berglund,et al.  Handbook of Holocene Palaeoecology and Palaeohydrology , 2003 .