Climate change is one of the greatest challenges of our time. It reflects a growing imbalance between people and the natural systems that support life on Earth. Building a more sustainable future requires more than understanding present-day environmental problems. It requires a deeper perspective on how ecosystems function, how they have changed over time, and how humans have interacted with them over long periods.
As a third-year bachelor student in biological and Earth sciences, I have become increasingly interested in these long-term interactions between climate, ecosystems, and human land use. I have learned that ecosystems are not stable systems, but dynamic ones that continuously respond to changes in climate, fire, and land use. Palaeoecology provides a way to reconstruct these long-term dynamics and place modern environmental change in a much deeper temporal context.
Although environmental change has always been part of Earth’s history, the current situation is characterised by a particularly rapid combination of climate change and human pressure on land systems. This makes long-term knowledge especially important, as it helps us distinguish natural variability from human-driven change and understand whether current ecosystems are within historical ranges of behaviour or entering new states.
Honours Program Thesis Extension
For the Honours Program alongside my bachelor’s degree, I extended my palaeoecology thesis with an interdisciplinary perspective focused on how long-term environmental knowledge can inform future land management. Rather than treating palaeoecology only as a reconstructive science, I explored its role as a bridge between past ecosystem dynamics and present-day sustainability challenges.
As a case study, I focused on the Dahomey Gap in West Africa, a forest–savanna transition zone that interrupts the continuous Guineo-Congolese rainforest belt. This region is not a fixed ecological boundary, but a shifting mosaic shaped over time by climate variability, fire, and human land use.
In this article I summarize and describe the scientific research that was performed near Botopasi in Suriname, which was published in Ecology as ‘Pre-contact and post-colonial ecological legacies shape Surinamese rainforests’ (https://doi.org/10.1002/ecy.4272).
Figure 1: Our research team in the field
Background
In October 2021, between COVID-19 restrictions, I joined archaeologist dr. Cheryl White and her team to excavate the remnants of a ‘lost village’ of Saamaka Maroons in the Surinamese rainforest. Maroons are the descendants of enslaved Africans, who, in the late 1600s, fled plantations to live in freedom in the Surinamese rainforests. Dr. White has been investigating the first villages and the movements of Suriname’s Maroon communities for decades and is an expert in this topic.
Our wonderful research team consisted of Farisha Kartosemito B.Sc., Sushmeeta Ganesh B.Sc., Jõvan Samson B.Sc., Agir Axwijk B.Sc., Santosh Singh M.A., Thanya Fonkel MPA, Harrold Sijlbing, Dombi Lö, Gerno Eduards & Farik Eduards. We were welcomed in the village Botopasi, and after a day of hard work in the field, we enjoyed delicious Surinamese food and played troefcall!
As an ecologist, I was interested in the ecological effects of past human activities on the forest ecosystem. In these rainforests, Maroon and Indigenous communities often burn and remove trees near their homes to grow a variety of crops like cassava, tayer, maize and banana. After some years, the cultivation site is abandoned and forests can grow back. But do those forests recover back to their original state?
What did the forest look like before people arrived and settled in the landscape of Boven Suriname?
To study how Maroon communities have shaped Surinamese forests over time, I made a reconstruction of the landscape of the past (going back thousands of years). The landscape was near an archaeological sites called ‘Beng Tau’, where Maroons lived in the 17th century. We used plant fossils and charcoal remains to reconstruct the forest from the past, to research if people were using fire and growing crops, and how the forests recovered from that.
Results and implications
Figure 2: Phytoliths from the banana plant
The charcoal remains and plant fossils, particularly from maize and banana, confirmed Saamaka Maroons settled in the area since ca. 1700 and practiced slash-and-burn agriculture was near the archaeological site called ‘Beng Tapu’ (Figure 2). The site may have been a cooking area, because remnants of pottery with maize, rice and banana were found. Within 1 km of Beng Tapu, we found large fragments of charcoal, and plant fossils from maize and banana. Smaller charcoal fragments and banana were found within 5 km of the archaeological site. Nowadays, agriculture is practiced within 8 km of the archaeological site and Suriname river. The area used for agriculture likely expanded over time.
How did the forest recover from these activities?
Within 1 km of the archaeological site, forests were burnt and used multiple times. Here, forests have a lower biomass than further away from Beng Tapu, meaning fewer or smaller trees have grown back. Also, Attalea and Oenocarpus palm trees increased. Still today, the Saamaka Maroon community uses the maripa palm to make oil. Therefore, the number of maripa palms may have increased due to human activities like cooking and oil production! Attalea and Oenocarpus palms are also adapted to open conditions and fire, showing the influence people had on the environment and how the forest responded to fires.
Further (2-7 km) away from the archaeological site, where disturbances were fewer, the forests recovered much better but Astrocaryum palms grew back in higher numbers in the understory of the forests. What makes these palms so resilient? We are still uncertain. The forests furthest away (>8km) from Beng Tapu showed little signs of disturbances.
Figure 3: View from the Suriname River
A long human history, and an Indigenous archaeological site?
The Saamaka Maroons were not the first people to have inhabited the forests near Botopasi. Charcoal fragments show that people were in region (the ca. 20 km radius we studied) already 2000 years ago, and fire events occurred ca. 2000, 1700,1500, 1300, 1200 and 800 years ago. We don’t know which Indigenous Cultures may have inhabited this region, because of limited archaeological and historical research here. Large charcoal fragments were found ca. 7 km away from Beng Tapu, across the Suriname River. Could this be an Indigenous archaeological site?
Conclusion
Our results show the timing, intensity and frequency of past disturbances are very important for good forest recovery and some disturbances from the past can still impact the modern vegetation.
Unravelling the past not only tells us about the ancestors of Maroons and the lives of Indigenous communities before the 1500s. The past also helps us to understand how forests respond to human impacts. To better guide conservation strategies, we need to do more archaeological and ecological research in Surinamese rainforests.
Next to the Suriname River, past human activities shaped the forest andincreased local palm abundances. The broader forested region showed a healthy recovery. These results indicate that the Saamaka Maroon community preserved most of the forests they inhabited since the 1700s. We can learn from traditional knowledge about which management practices are sustainable to keep forests healthy.
If you want to know more about the “hows” of this research…dive with me into the methodology!
We invite you to join us on an incredible journey through the heart of Ecuador, where a group of adventurous students from Florida Institute of Technology embarked on a life-changing experience as part of the Neotropical Archaeoecology summer field course. Buckle up as we delve into the marvels of nature, indigenous cultures, and unforgettable experiences. Let’s dive right in!
Unveiling the Andes
Our adventure began with a breath-taking visit to the Paramo at Cayambe-Coca National Park. Paramos are high altitude (3000-4000 metres) wet grasslands above the tree line and below the snow line within the equatorial Andes. Our tour guides Patricio and Byron gave us information about the local vegetation, focusing on the Polylepis tree (locally known as “paper tree”), which is unique to this sort of habitat. They also told us about some of the fascinating wildlife that can be seen here, such as the Andean Bear (Tremarctos ornatus) and the Andean Puma (Puma concolor).
We then descended through the cloud forest (3,600–3,400 meters) and lower montane rainforest (3,400–2,500 meters). Across these various habitats, we documented changes in hummingbird abundance and recorded their behaviour at four different feeder points: Guango Lodge, La Brisa, San Isidro Lodge, and Cascada el Hollin. The sheer diversity of hummingbird species left us in awe, and we marvelled at their iridescent feathers and incredible agility.
We explored a waterfall near San Isidro Lodge (https://cabanasanisidro.com), and we were able to observe pre-Inca pottery. At the lodge we also saw a diverse array of bird species, which was delightful! The forest’s nightlife brought us close encounters with a group of nocturnal monkeys, and to our surprise, we stumbled upon a very rare mountain tapir. The following morning we saw a small agouti (a small rodent) prowling around the lodge, and ended our adventures in the cloud forest on a high note.
San Isidro waterfall and some of the animal diversity we observed
Strandberg, N.A., Edwards, M., Ellison, J.C., Steinbauer, M.J., Walentowitz, A., Fall, P.L., Sear, D., Langdon, P., Cronin, S., Castilla-Beltrán, A., Croudace, I.W., Prebble, M., Gosling, W.D. & Nogué, S. (2023) Influences of sea level changes and volcanic eruptions on Holocene vegetation in Tonga. Biotropica. DOI: 10.1111/btp.13231
McMichael, C.N.H., Vink, V., Heijink, B.M., Witteveen, N.H., Piperno, D.R., Gosling, W.D. & Bush, M.B. (2023) Ecological legacies of past fire and human activity in a Panamanian forest. Plants, People, Planet5, 281-291. DOI: 10.1002/ppp3.10344
Maezumi, S.Y., Elliott, S., Robinson, M., Betancourt, C.J., Gregorio de Souza, J., Alves, D., Grosvenor, M., Hilbert, L., Urrego, D.H., Gosling, W.D. & Iriarte, J. (2022) Legacies of Indigenous land use and cultural burning in the Bolivian Amazon rainforest ecotone. Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences 377, 20200499. https://doi.org/10.1098/rstb.2020.0499
14:10-14:30: Characterization of phytoliths in mid-elevation Andean forestsSeringe Huisman (University of Amsterdam/Treub grant awardee)
14:30 –14:50: Extinction-driven changes in frugivore communities on tropical islands: worldwide and in MauritiusJulia Heinen (University of Copenhagen, Denmark)
14:50 – 15:10: Are the current Amazonian fires unprecedented?Crystal N.H. McMichael (University of Amsterdam)
15:10 – 15:30: On the relationship between tiger conservation and water managementJasper Griffioen, Hanne Berghuis & Ewa van Kooten (Utrecht University)
15:30-16:00: TEA
16:00 – 16:45: Assembling the diverse rain forest flora of SE Asia by evaluating the fossil and molecular record in relation to plate tectonicsRobert J. Morley (Palynova, and Southeast Asia Research Group, Royal Holloway University of London, UK)
The Netherlands Annual Ecology Meeting (NAEM) 2019 takes place in the 12 and 13 February. This annual showcase of predominantly Dutch based ecological research will take place, as usual, at Conference Centre “De Werelt” (Lunteren). I am particularly excited this year as, along with Marielos Pena Carlos and Patrick Jansen, I am co-convening a session on “Tropical Ecology”. The first time I have contributed to the program in this way. Our session will be on the second day of the conference and contain the following exciting presentations:
15:00 Predator avoidance and prey tracking in a Neotropical forest (Constant Swinkels, Wageningen University & Research)
15:20 The role of fig volatiles in pollinator specificity and fig diversity (Aafke Oldenbeuving, Naturalis Biodiversity Center)
15:40 Mangrove Atlantis: Can mangroves keep up with extreme land-subsidence? (Celine van Bijsterveldt, Royal Netherlands Institute for Sea Research)
16:00 Break
16:10 The fate of forests in agro-forest frontier landscapes, implications for conservation (Madelon Lohbeck, Wageningen University & Research)
16:30 Trends in the variability of Specific Leaf Area of paramo vegetation during succession (Marian Cabrera, University of Amsterdam)
16:50 Succession dynamics of tree and soil fungal communities in regenerating tropical rainforests are strongly influenced by regional species pool and abiotic factors (Irene Adamo, Naturalis Biodiversity Center)
For those of you I have not had the pleasure of meeting yet, please allow me to introduce myself. My name is Yoshi Maezumi. I have recently been awarded a Marie Curie Fellowship for my research proposal FIRE: Fire Intensity in Rainforest Ecotones. I will have the honor of working with an extraordinary team of international, interdisciplinary researchers including Will Gosling, Crystal McMichael, Emiel van Loon, and Boris Jansen from the University of Amsterdam, Boris Vannière from the Université de Franche-Comté, Jose Iriarte from the University of Exeter, and Francisco Cruz from the University of São Paulo. Together we will examine the long-term role of fire in shaping Amazon Rainforest Ecotones.
My research is focused on paleofire (fire in the past) in Neotropical savanna and rainforest ecosystems. My current post-doctoral research at the University of Exeter is investigating the role indigenous fire management practices had on shaping the composition, structure, and flammability of modern Amazonian rainforests.
Recently introduced to a book by Bill Gammage entitled The Biggest Estate on Earth: How the Aborigines Made Australia. Gammage identifies five uses of indigenous fire: 1) to control wildfire fuel; 2) to maintain diversity; 3) to balance species; 4) to ensure abundance; 5) to locate resources conveniently and predictably. Gammage argues that our current regime is struggling with number one. These stages of fire management provide some really interesting food for thought for my Marie Curie Fellowship as I aim to develop new paleoecological techniques to analyze paleofire that will be used to model natural and anthropogenic drivers of paleofire activity.
I have been thinking a lot about what we do and do not know about paleofire. One of the ways we reconstruct past fire activity is through the use of charcoal preserved in lake sediments. Charcoal can tell us a lot about what past fires were like including what kind of plants were burning, how often fires occurred, and potentially how big a fire was. One of the more elusive components is paleofire intensity, or how hot a particular fire was. The temperature of a fire has important ecological implications, as hotter fires tend to cause more ecological damage. Lots of factors can contribute to fire intensity including droughts, fuel loads, vegetation composition and structure, fuel moisture, etc. All of this is to say that, fire intensity is complicated. Nevertheless, one of the main objectives of my Marie Curie research will be to compile what we currently know about the effect of modern fire intensity on the charcoal formation to figure out how that information can be used to interpret charcoal from the palaeorecord.
If you would like to join me on this ‘intense’ paleofire journey, (punny, I know, I just couldn’t resist), I am starting a weekly science blog called Her Science that will highlight the trials, tribulations, and triumphs of my Marie Curie research over the next few years.
Ecology of the past 