How have First Nations’ past sites of habitation influenced present-day ecology on the Central Coast of British Columbia?
Bibliographic record
Abstract
Humans have transformed much of the earth’s surface through a wide range of activities of varying intensities and scales, shaping the landscape we see today. The combination of time and complex human-environment interactions within the Hakai Lúxvbálís Conservancy on the Central Coast of British Columbia has resulted in a landscape with many anthropogenically-generated modifications, such as shell middens which can be found at sites with histories of long-term habitation. Globally, shell middens (and in general, habitation sites) have been found to be factors in shaping site ecology. This thesis seeks to investigate this relationship between human activity and occupation and the landscape. The goal of this project is to examine the legacies from past land use, and subsidies from shell middens, within the present-day plant communities. I conducted an observational study to determine if species richness and overall plant communities on these habitation sites differed from sites without a history of intense occupation. To do this I selected ten habitation sites with known extensive shell middens and paired them with ten control sites with similar site conditions (but without the same site history or shell middens). I measured species abundances within 540 1 m x 1 m quadrats. I also surveyed a select group of culturally significant plant species and culturally modified trees within belt transects at each site. Data regarding the water table level and soil and foliar samples were also collected. A variety of environmental factors, along with the site history were evaluated as explanatory variables. Principal component analyses were used to describe how the gradients within the vegetation communities at three vegetation layers (ground, herb, shrub) to see if they respond differently to long-term site use. The habitation sites were found to be characterized by N-rich plant communities, which were significantly different from the plant communities on the control sites at the ground layer, herb layer, and with all layers combined, at both transect distances analysed, but the shrub layer was only significantly different when the entire transect was considered. The results show plant community composition is most strongly influenced by a combination of factors including site type, canopy cover, slope, topography, and distance from shore, with the weight of their importance depending on what vegetation layer is considered. The habitation sites had a lower average species richness at all layers, compared to the control sites, and their plant communities were shown to change differently with distance from the marine shoreline. Habitation sites also differed by having higher soil nutrient content, lower water table levels, and contained culturally important plant species that were absent on the control sites. This research highlights the influence that humans have had on landscapes in this region. This study shows how the patterns within the plant communities at the habitation sites differ from what is expected within the Coastal Western Hemlock zone. The research improves our understanding of the factors influencing vegetation patterns on the Central Coast of British Columbia with this examination of the complex intersection of historical practices and environmental changes.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.001 | 0.003 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.001 | 0.002 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.003 | 0.002 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.003 | 0.001 |
| Open science | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Research integrity | 0.000 | 0.001 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.004 | 0.000 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".