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Jul
29
2009
Plant invasion lingers on ancient Native American sites
When humans settle on a patch of land, the disruption can prompt new plant species to move in. But scientists haven’t known quite how long the invasion will last after people leave.
To find out, scientists studied eight Native American middens along the California coast, where tribes cooked and discarded seafood more than a century ago. The proportion of introduced plant cover was about 20 percent higher on the middens than in nearby areas, they report in Biological Invasions. Most of the increase came from introduced annual plants, which were 110 percent more pervasive on the middens.
The difference might be due to a change in soil nutrients, the team says. The middens had twice as much inorganic nitrogen in their soil, and the concentration appeared to correspond with the number of shell fragments. The findings suggest that certain types of human land use may continue to encourage plant invasion “far into the future,” they write. – Roberta Kwok
Source: Karalius, T. and P. Alpert. 2009. High abundance of introduced plants on ancient Native American middens. Biological Invasions DOI: 10.1007/s10530-009-9530-4
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