Native American landscape modification in pre-settlement south-west Georgia

ABSTRACT

Our objective was to interpret the presence and magnitude of landscape modification by Native Americans on Georgia’s southern coastal plain. Specifically, we aimed to understand how the Native American presence influenced the distribution of fire-tolerant, mast-bearing and fruit-bearing tree species in the fire-dominated landscape of south-west Georgia.

Our study area was comprised of sixteen contiguous counties in the south-west region of Georgia, in southeast USA bordering the Atlantic, investigating the taxon Angiosperms and Gymnosperms native to the early landscape of this region.

We used witness tree data collected during the early 1820s across sixteen modern-day counties to reconstruct pre-settlement forest composition, particularly pyrophillic trees that are well-adapted to tolerate fire, and mast- and fruit-bearing species. We then used geographic distribution models (Boosted Regression Tree) to interpret the presence and magnitude of landscape modification by Native Americans on Georgia’s forested south-west plain.

The pre-settlement distribution of pyrophillic and mast-bearing trees within our study area were best explained by a combination of environmental (topographic relief, proximity to riparian zones, and soil depth) and Native American factors (AUC = 0.64 and 0.66, respectively).

However, the addition of Native American presence as predictors greatly increased the explanatory power of soft mast (fruit)-bearing models (AUC = +0.17).

Our results demonstrate that Native American activities had a measurable influence on pre-settlement plant communities in south-western Georgia. However, the effects of these activities on vegetative composition were most notable in the distributions of fruit-bearing trees. In contrast, distributions of fire-tolerant and mast-bearing taxa were found to be largely explained by a combination of environmental and anthropogenic factors.

Keywords:

• Fire
• fruit
• Georgia
• landscape
• mast
• Native American
• settlement
• trees
• vegetation

acknowledgements

We express much gratitude to the Joseph W. Jones Ecological Research Center for their generous use of spatial databases and historical records of the state of Georgia. We also thank Charles Lafon, Ajinkya Deshpande, Angelina Perrotti, Joseph Garcia, Katelyn McDonough, and Lacy Monier for their involvement and contributions in the early stages of this project.