Pre-colonial (A.D. 1100–1600) sedimentation related to prehistoric maize agriculture and climate change in eastern North America

Legacy effects on sediments in river corridors

“…in China (Mei-e and Xianmo, 1994) to the 19th century in parts of the Americas (Clark and Wilcock, 2000) and Australia (Gale and Haworth, 2005), and 20th-21st century clearing in parts of South America and Southeast Asia (Douglas, 1999;Chappell et al, 2004;Martinez et al, 2009). Some indigenous peoples in the Americas and Oceania also practiced more localized agriculture much earlier and altered natural fire regimes in a manner that affected sediment yields (Denevan, 2011;Stinchcomb et al, 2011;James and Lecce, 2013).…”

Natural and human-induced prehistoric and historical soil erosion and landscape development in Southwestern Tennessee, USA

“…This triggered economic and social consequences like declining production and localized crop failures. A recent study of the Delaware River showed that deforestation and subsequent agriculture by Native Americans had triggered accelerated soil erosion and siltation in rivers (Stinchcomb et al, 2011), but it is not known whether soil erosion was a dominant driving force for the decline in pre-contact population levels. In the arid southwestern USA, gully (arroyo) formation has also been intensely discussed as a main factor leading to the abandonment of southern Utah and northern Arizona by Ancestral Puebloan groups (Bryan, 1925;Leopold, 1976;Hereford et al, 1995).…”

Humans as the third evolutionary stage of biosphere engineering of rivers

“…Anomaly-Little Ice Age transition (Stinchcomb et al, 2011). In each of these particular instances, changes in alluvial regime have been mediated through anthropogenically-forced vegetation changes, partly inversely analogous to the Palaeozoic rise in influence of land plants in alluvial systems.…”