The legacy of 4,500 years of polyculture agroforestry in the eastern Amazon

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Abstract

The legacy of pre-Columbian land use on modern Amazonian forests has stimulated considerable debate which, until now, has not been satisfactorily resolved due to the absence of integrated studies between pre-Columbian and modern land use. Here we show an abrupt enrichment of edible forest species combined with the cultivation of multiple annual crops in lake and terrestrial fossil records associated with pre-Columbian occupation in the eastern Amazon. Our results suggest that ~4,500 years ago, pre-Columbians adopted a polyculture agroforestry subsistence strategy that intensified with the development of Amazon Dark Earth soils after ~2,000 cal yr B.P. These millennial-scale polyculture agroforestry systems have left an enduring legacy on the modern enrichment of edible plants, demonstrating the important role of past indigenous land management in shaping modern forest ecosystems in the eastern Amazon.

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Hyperdominance in the Amazonian tree flora.

Hans ter Steege, Nigel C A Pitman, Daniel Sabatier … (2014)

The vast extent of the Amazon Basin has historically restricted the study of its tree communities to the local and regional scales. Here, we provide empirical data on the commonness, rarity, and richness of lowland tree species across the entire Amazon Basin and Guiana Shield (Amazonia), collected in 1170 tree plots in all major forest types. Extrapolations suggest that Amazonia harbors roughly 16,000 tree species, of which just 227 (1.4%) account for half of all trees. Most of these are habitat specialists and only dominant in one or two regions of the basin. We discuss some implications of the finding that a small group of species--less diverse than the North American tree flora--accounts for half of the world's most diverse tree community.