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      Mapping past human land use using archaeological data: A new classification for global land use synthesis and data harmonization

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      1 , 2 , * , 1 , 3 , 4 , 5 , 6 , 7 , 1 , 8 , 4 , 9 , 10 , 1 , 11 , 12 , 13 , 14 , 15 , 16 , 17 , 18 , 19 , 20 , 21 , 22 , 23 , 24 , 25 , 26 , 27 , 28 , 29 , 30 , 31 , 32 , 33 , 34 , 35 , 36 , 37 , 38 , 39 , 40 , 41 , 42 , 43 , 44 , 45 , 46 , 47 , 48 , 49 , 50 , 51 , 52 , 53 , 54 , 55 , 56 , 57 , 38 , 58 , 59 , 60 , 61 , 62 , 4 , 63 , 64 , 65 , 66 , 67 , 40 , 22
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          Abstract

          In the 12,000 years preceding the Industrial Revolution, human activities led to significant changes in land cover, plant and animal distributions, surface hydrology, and biochemical cycles. Earth system models suggest that this anthropogenic land cover change influenced regional and global climate. However, the representation of past land use in earth system models is currently oversimplified. As a result, there are large uncertainties in the current understanding of the past and current state of the earth system. In order to improve representation of the variety and scale of impacts that past land use had on the earth system, a global effort is underway to aggregate and synthesize archaeological and historical evidence of land use systems. Here we present a simple, hierarchical classification of land use systems designed to be used with archaeological and historical data at a global scale and a schema of codes that identify land use practices common to a range of systems, both implemented in a geospatial database. The classification scheme and database resulted from an extensive process of consultation with researchers worldwide. Our scheme is designed to deliver consistent, empirically robust data for the improvement of land use models, while simultaneously allowing for a comparative, detailed mapping of land use relevant to the needs of historical scholars. To illustrate the benefits of the classification scheme and methods for mapping historical land use, we apply it to Mesopotamia and Arabia at 6 kya (c. 4000 BCE). The scheme will be used to describe land use by the Past Global Changes (PAGES) LandCover6k working group, an international project comprised of archaeologists, historians, geographers, paleoecologists, and modelers. Beyond this, the scheme has a wide utility for creating a common language between research and policy communities, linking archaeologists with climate modelers, biodiversity conservation workers and initiatives.

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          Overview of the Coupled Model Intercomparison Project Phase 6 (CMIP6) experimental design and organization

          By coordinating the design and distribution of global climate model simulations of the past, current, and future climate, the Coupled Model Intercomparison Project (CMIP) has become one of the foundational elements of climate science. However, the need to address an ever-expanding range of scientific questions arising from more and more research communities has made it necessary to revise the organization of CMIP. After a long and wide community consultation, a new and more federated structure has been put in place. It consists of three major elements: (1) a handful of common experiments, the DECK (Diagnostic, Evaluation and Characterization of Klima) and CMIP historical simulations (1850–near present) that will maintain continuity and help document basic characteristics of models across different phases of CMIP; (2) common standards, coordination, infrastructure, and documentation that will facilitate the distribution of model outputs and the characterization of the model ensemble; and (3) an ensemble of CMIP-Endorsed Model Intercomparison Projects (MIPs) that will be specific to a particular phase of CMIP (now CMIP6) and that will build on the DECK and CMIP historical simulations to address a large range of specific questions and fill the scientific gaps of the previous CMIP phases. The DECK and CMIP historical simulations, together with the use of CMIP data standards, will be the entry cards for models participating in CMIP. Participation in CMIP6-Endorsed MIPs by individual modelling groups will be at their own discretion and will depend on their scientific interests and priorities. With the Grand Science Challenges of the World Climate Research Programme (WCRP) as its scientific backdrop, CMIP6 will address three broad questions: – How does the Earth system respond to forcing? – What are the origins and consequences of systematic model biases? – How can we assess future climate changes given internal climate variability, predictability, and uncertainties in scenarios? This CMIP6 overview paper presents the background and rationale for the new structure of CMIP, provides a detailed description of the DECK and CMIP6 historical simulations, and includes a brief introduction to the 21 CMIP6-Endorsed MIPs.
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            High-resolution global maps of 21st-century forest cover change.

            Quantification of global forest change has been lacking despite the recognized importance of forest ecosystem services. In this study, Earth observation satellite data were used to map global forest loss (2.3 million square kilometers) and gain (0.8 million square kilometers) from 2000 to 2012 at a spatial resolution of 30 meters. The tropics were the only climate domain to exhibit a trend, with forest loss increasing by 2101 square kilometers per year. Brazil's well-documented reduction in deforestation was offset by increasing forest loss in Indonesia, Malaysia, Paraguay, Bolivia, Zambia, Angola, and elsewhere. Intensive forestry practiced within subtropical forests resulted in the highest rates of forest change globally. Boreal forest loss due largely to fire and forestry was second to that in the tropics in absolute and proportional terms. These results depict a globally consistent and locally relevant record of forest change.
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              Defining the anthropocene.

              Time is divided by geologists according to marked shifts in Earth's state. Recent global environmental changes suggest that Earth may have entered a new human-dominated geological epoch, the Anthropocene. Here we review the historical genesis of the idea and assess anthropogenic signatures in the geological record against the formal requirements for the recognition of a new epoch. The evidence suggests that of the various proposed dates two do appear to conform to the criteria to mark the beginning of the Anthropocene: 1610 and 1964. The formal establishment of an Anthropocene Epoch would mark a fundamental change in the relationship between humans and the Earth system.
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                Journal
                PLoS One
                PLoS One
                plos
                plosone
                PLoS ONE
                Public Library of Science (San Francisco, CA USA )
                1932-6203
                14 April 2021
                2021
                : 16
                : 4
                : e0246662
                Affiliations
                [1 ] Department of Anthropology, University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, United States of America
                [2 ] Department of Near East Languages and Civilizations and the Price Lab for the Digital Humanities, University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, United States of America
                [3 ] ICREA–CaSEs–Department of Humanities, Universitat Pompeu Fabra, Barcelona, Spain
                [4 ] School of Geography, Archaeology and Environmental Studies, The University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, South Africa
                [5 ] School of Geography, Earth and Environmental Sciences, Plymouth University, Plymouth, United Kingdom
                [6 ] Department of Archaeology, University of Glasgow, Glasgow, United Kingdom
                [7 ] Department of Biology and Environmental Sciences, Linnaeus University, Växjö, Sweden
                [8 ] Institute for the Modelling of Socio-Environmental Transitions, Bournemouth University, Bournemouth, United Kingdom
                [9 ] Department of Anthropology, University of Chicago, Chicago, Illinois, United States of America
                [10 ] Barrett Honors College, Arizona State University, Tempe, Arizona, United States of America
                [11 ] Integrative Prehistory and Archaeological Science (IPNA/IPAS), University of Basel, Basel, Switzerland
                [12 ] Department of Anthropology, Stanford University, Stanford, California, United States of America
                [13 ] Department d’Humanitats, Universitat Pompeu Fabra, Barcelona, Spain
                [14 ] School of Geography, Archaeology and Environmental Studies, University of the Witwatersrand, South Africa
                [15 ] Museum of Archaeology, University of Stavanger, Stavanger, Norway
                [16 ] Department of Historical, Philosophical and religious Studies, Umeå University, Umeå, Sweden
                [17 ] UE CISOR CONICET UNJu, Argentine National Science Council (CONICET), Argentina
                [18 ] Institute of Archaeology of the Czech Academy of Sciences, Academy of Sciences Prague, Czech Republic
                [19 ] Faculty of Archaeology, Leiden University, Leiden, The Netherlands
                [20 ] Palaeo-Research Institute, University of Johannesburg, Johannesburg, South Africa
                [21 ] Department of Geography and Environmental Systems, University of Maryland Baltimore County, Maryland, United States of America
                [22 ] Institute of Pre- and Protohistoric Archaeology, Kiel, Germany
                [23 ] College of Arts & Sciences, Anthropology, University of Tulsa, Tusla, Oklahoma, United States of America
                [24 ] School of Geography, University of Lincoln, Lincoln, United Kingdom
                [25 ] School of Archaeology, Geography and Environmental Science, University of Reading, Reading, United Kingdom
                [26 ] Department of Archaeology, Cotton University, Guwahati, India
                [27 ] Department of Archaeology, University of Exeter, Exeter, United Kingdom
                [28 ] Institute for Prehistoric Archaeology, Universitat zu Koln, Cologne, Germany
                [29 ] Department of Earth Sciences, The University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong, Hong Kong
                [30 ] Max Planck Institute for the Science of Human History, Jena, Germany
                [31 ] Copernicus Institute of Sustainable Development, Utrecht University, Utrecht, The Netherlands
                [32 ] Institute of Botany of the Czech Academy of Sciences, Prague, Czech Republic
                [33 ] Institute of Archaeology and Museology, Masaryk University, Brno, Czech Republic
                [34 ] Department of History and Political Science, Kyambogo University, Kampala, Uganda
                [35 ] Institute for Archaeolgical Scienes, Bern University, Bern, Switzerland
                [36 ] Oeschger Centre for Climate Change Research, Bern University, Bern, Switzerland
                [37 ] Institute of Pre- and Protohistoric Archaeology, Kiel University, Keil, Germany
                [38 ] ICREA–Department of Humanities, Universitat Pompeu Fabra, Barcelona, Spain
                [39 ] Department of Archaeology, University of Cambridge, Cambridge, United Kingdom
                [40 ] School of Geography, Archaeology and Environmental Studies, University of the Witwatersrand, Witwatersrand, South Africa
                [41 ] Department of Archaeology, Durham University, Durham, United Kingdom
                [42 ] Department of Sociology and Anthropology, University of Arkansas at Little Rock, Little Rock, Arkansas, United States of America
                [43 ] Institute of Geography, University of Bern, Bern, Switzerland
                [44 ] Institute of Heritage Science, National Research Council of Italy, Montelibretti, Rome, Italy
                [45 ] Department of Asian, African and Mediterranean Studies, University of Naples L’Orientale, Naples, Italy
                [46 ] Institute of Archaeology, University College London, London, United Kingdom
                [47 ] York Institute for Tropical Ecosystems, Department of Environment and Geography, University of York, York, United Kingdom
                [48 ] Department of Geography and Environmental Science, University of Reading, Reading, United Kingdom
                [49 ] School of Archaeology, University College Dublin, Dublin, Ireland
                [50 ] Department of Anthropology, Dartmouth College, Hanover, New Hampshire, United States of America
                [51 ] School of Biological, Earth and Environmental Sciences, UNSW Sydney, Sydney, Australia
                [52 ] W. Szafer Institute of Botany, Polish Academy of Sciences, Warsaw, Poland
                [53 ] Department of Prehistory, Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona, Bellaterra, Spain
                [54 ] Department of Earth Sciences, National Museums of Kenya, Nairobi, Kenya
                [55 ] Laboratório de Arqueologia dos Trópicos, Museu de Arqueologia e Etnologia, Universidade de São Paulo, São Paulo, Brazil
                [56 ] Institute of Archaeology, Jagiellonian University, Kraków, Poland
                [57 ] Department of Archaeological Science and Conservation, Moesgaard Museum, Højbjerg, Denmark
                [58 ] McDonald Institute for Archaeological Research, University of Cambridge, Cambridge, United Kingdom
                [59 ] Tropical diversity, Royal Botanic Garden Edinburgh, Edinburgh, United Kingdom
                [60 ] School of GeoSciences, University of Edinburgh, Edinburgh, United Kingdom
                [61 ] Department of Physical Geography, Eötvös Loránd University, Budapest, Hungary
                [62 ] Centre national de la recherche scientifique, Nanterre, France
                [63 ] Department of Geography and Anthropology, Louisana State University, Baton Rouge, Louisiana, United States of America
                [64 ] School of Archaeology, University of Oxford, Oxford, United Kingdom
                [65 ] Instituto de Desenvolvimento Sustentável Mamirauá, Amazonas, Brazil
                [66 ] The Alliance of Bioversity International and CIAT, Lima, Peru
                [67 ] Department of Maritime History and Marine Archaeology, Tamil University, Tanjore, India
                Utah State University, UNITED STATES
                Author notes

                Competing Interests: The authors have declared that no competing interests exist.

                Author information
                https://orcid.org/0000-0002-7774-1988
                https://orcid.org/0000-0002-7044-6492
                https://orcid.org/0000-0002-7100-4741
                https://orcid.org/0000-0002-9438-760X
                https://orcid.org/0000-0003-0936-3070
                https://orcid.org/0000-0002-2006-3362
                https://orcid.org/0000-0003-3712-3744
                https://orcid.org/0000-0001-8478-943X
                https://orcid.org/0000-0001-8285-1893
                https://orcid.org/0000-0001-8013-6992
                https://orcid.org/0000-0003-1503-7220
                https://orcid.org/0000-0003-1099-7329
                https://orcid.org/0000-0001-5613-1243
                https://orcid.org/0000-0003-4722-1065
                https://orcid.org/0000-0001-6371-333X
                https://orcid.org/0000-0003-4449-5060
                https://orcid.org/0000-0001-9377-298X
                https://orcid.org/0000-0001-7262-5358
                https://orcid.org/0000-0002-7385-3907
                https://orcid.org/0000-0003-0985-6406
                https://orcid.org/0000-0002-0241-216X
                https://orcid.org/0000-0002-1509-0681
                https://orcid.org/0000-0001-9400-0682
                https://orcid.org/0000-0003-2374-9690
                Article
                PONE-D-20-19658
                10.1371/journal.pone.0246662
                8046197
                33852578
                0085bbea-afb2-40d5-8a1d-868ac6ab1702
                © 2021 Morrison et al

                This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.

                History
                : 25 June 2020
                : 24 January 2021
                Page count
                Figures: 10, Tables: 0, Pages: 38
                Funding
                This study was undertaken as part of the Past Global Changes (PAGES) project (and its working group LandCover6k), which in turn received support from the U.S. National Science Foundation, Swiss Academy of Sciences and the Chinese Academy of Sciences. The work of global-scale coordination, database development, and the work of land use groups around the world was supported with workshop grants from Past Global Change (PAGES) and the Human and Biosphere Commission of INQUA (the Global Holocene Land Use - HoLa - International Focus Group and related projects). Additional funding was provided by the University of Chicago, the University of Pennsylvania, and the many institutional and personal sources of support for travel and time that allowed the many participants in this project to contribute their expertise and enthusiasm to this critical effort. The funders had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript.
                Categories
                Research Article
                Earth Sciences
                Geography
                Human Geography
                Land Use
                Social Sciences
                Human Geography
                Land Use
                Social Sciences
                Archaeology
                Biology and Life Sciences
                Agriculture
                Earth Sciences
                Atmospheric Science
                Climatology
                Paleoclimatology
                Biology and Life Sciences
                Paleontology
                Paleoclimatology
                Earth Sciences
                Paleontology
                Paleoclimatology
                Earth Sciences
                Geography
                Physical Geography
                Earth Systems
                Biology and Life Sciences
                Organisms
                Eukaryota
                Animals
                Vertebrates
                Amniotes
                Mammals
                Bovines
                Cattle
                Biology and Life Sciences
                Zoology
                Animals
                Vertebrates
                Amniotes
                Mammals
                Bovines
                Cattle
                Biology and Life Sciences
                Organisms
                Eukaryota
                Animals
                Vertebrates
                Amniotes
                Mammals
                Ruminants
                Cattle
                Biology and Life Sciences
                Zoology
                Animals
                Vertebrates
                Amniotes
                Mammals
                Ruminants
                Cattle
                Social Sciences
                Archaeology
                Historical Archaeology
                Social Sciences
                Archaeology
                Archaeological Dating
                Radioactive Carbon Dating
                Research and Analysis Methods
                Chemical Characterization
                Isotope Analysis
                Radioactive Carbon Dating
                Custom metadata
                Middle East land use data for 6 kya have been exported as a shapefile and are available through the PANGAEA Data Publisher for Earth & Environmental Science ( doi.pangaea.de/10.1594/PANGAEA.922243). A blank copy of the land use geodatabase with the land use classification programmed into it is available as a Supporting Information file.

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