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- Marchant, Rob, et al.
(författare)
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Drivers and trajectories of land cover change in East Africa : Human and environmental interactions from 6000 years ago to present
- 2018
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Ingår i: Earth-Science Reviews. - : Elsevier. - 0012-8252 .- 1872-6828. ; 178, s. 322-378
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- East African landscapes today are the result of the cumulative effects of climate and land-use change over millennial timescales. In this review, we compile archaeological and palaeoenvironmental data from East Africa to document land-cover change, and environmental, subsistence and land-use transitions, over the past 6000 years. Throughout East Africa there have been a series of relatively rapid and high-magnitude environmental shifts characterised by changing hydrological budgets during the mid- to late Holocene. For example, pronounced environmental shifts that manifested as a marked change in the rainfall amount or seasonality and subsequent hydrological budget throughout East Africa occurred around 4000, 800 and 300 radiocarbon years before present (yr BP). The past 6000 years have also seen numerous shifts in human interactions with East African ecologies. From the mid-Holocene, land use has both diversified and increased exponentially, this has been associated with the arrival of new subsistence systems, crops, migrants and technologies, all giving rise to a sequence of significant phases of land-cover change. The first large-scale human influences began to occur around 4000 yr BP, associated with the introduction of domesticated livestock and the expansion of pastoral communities. The first widespread and intensive forest clearances were associated with the arrival of iron-using early farming communities around 2500 yr BP, particularly in productive and easily-cleared mid-altitudinal areas. Extensive and pervasive land-cover change has been associated with population growth, immigration and movement of people. The expansion of trading routes between the interior and the coast, starting around 1300 years ago and intensifying in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries CE, was one such process. These caravan routes possibly acted as conduits for spreading New World crops such as maize (Zea mays), tobacco (Nicotiana spp.) and tomatoes (Solanum lycopersicum), although the processes and timings of their introductions remains poorly documented. The introduction of southeast Asian domesticates, especially banana (Musa spp.), rice (Oryza spp.), taro (Colocasia esculenta), and chicken (Gallus gallus), via transoceanic biological transfers around and across the Indian Ocean, from at least around 1300 yr BP, and potentially significantly earlier, also had profound social and ecological consequences across parts of the region. Through an interdisciplinary synthesis of information and metadatasets, we explore the different drivers and directions of changes in land-cover, and the associated environmental histories and interactions with various cultures, technologies, and subsistence strategies through time and across space in East Africa. This review suggests topics for targeted future research that focus on areas and/or time periods where our understanding of the interactions between people, the environment and land-cover change are most contentious and/or poorly resolved. The review also offers a perspective on how knowledge of regional land-use change can be used to inform and provide perspectives on contemporary issues such as climate and ecosystem change models, conservation strategies, and the achievement of nature-based solutions for development purposes.
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| 2. |
- Cort, Rebecca, 1988-
(författare)
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Getting Work Done : The Significance of the Human in Complex Socio-Technical Systems
- 2021
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Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- This thesis aims to deepen the understanding of the role and relevance of the worker in the functioning of complex socio-technical systems. The perspective adopted is profoundly human-centred and the worker is considered as a resource. This stands in stark contrast to the performance-related measurements and accident investigations which have typically formed much research on work in complex safety-critical systems and conveyed a perspective of the human as merely a system cog. The empirical material in this thesis is based on ethnographic fieldwork in the shape of workplace studies conducted across two distinct work domains: manufacturing and operational train traffic. The studies are informed by distributed cognition (DCog) and activity theory (AT) as prominent theoretical approaches for developing in-depth understandings of how work activities are accomplished in situations where the interplay between humans and their socio-cultural and material environment is of interest. The findings are illustrated by empirical work that provides detailed accounts of work practices derived from a total of four work settings. It is illustrated how acquired experiences and skills allow the workers to simultaneously use and create resources in the socio-material environment. The findings also reveal novel characteristics of adaptations as driven by a human agency rather than being a result of external demands, which is the common view in literature on work in safety-critical domains. Based on the findings, the role of the worker is illustrated as a meaning-making actor – not only participating in, but also actively contributing to the system and its functioning. In that capacity, the worker is acting as a driving force for a process of continuous development, allowing the system to continue to function although frequently exposed to uncertainties and unexpected events. This thesis contributes to a deepened understanding of the role of human workers in socio-technical systems, highlighting how workers are an invaluable asset when it comes to managing large variations and unexpected events in technology-mediated complex work. This contribution is complementary to the current understanding of how to uphold system safety and provides insight into what underlies a mutually beneficial relationship between humans and technology to which both parties can contribute with what they do best.
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