Ithaca College

Dan Weller has received the spring Sigma Xi Travel Award to travel to the Mid-Atlantic Ecological Society Meeting in Blacksburg, VA in April to present his talk: "Plant communities along shorelines in the Chesapeake Bay are altered by both Native American and modern land use history". Dan is a senior with a major in Anthropology and minors in Biology and Environmental Studies. Co-authors on the paper are John Parker, Terrestrial Ecology Lab, Smithsonian Environmental Research Center and Torben Rick, Department of Anthropology, National Museum of Natural History. The Mid-Atlantic Ecological Society of America meeting this year has a focus on Urban Ecology and Disturbance Ecology.

The long-term impact of pre-colonial human activity on coastal ecosystems in the Eastern United States has received little attention despite the prevalence of pre-colonial sites, like shell middens, in the modern landscape. We examined Late Woodland shell middens and paired non-midden sites for the relative abundances of invasive species, and the relative abundance woody species, forbs and grasses. We also examined the effect of middens on total species composition, tree size and soil chemistry. During analysis we stratified midden sites by modern land-use. There was no significant difference in the abundance of invasive species between the midden and control sites. Forbs and graminoids are significantly more abundant on middens, while woody species are significantly more abundant on non-midden sites. These vegetation differences may be due to the significantly higher pH and higher levels of calcium, nitrate, phosphorous and potassium in midden soils compared to control sites. Vegetation differences also appear correlate with modern land-use, namely agricultural versus residential. Understanding the impact of past human land-use is essential for developing restoration and conservation efforts.