DOI: 10.5061/dryad.xksn02vd8
title: Data from: Long-term ecological legacies in western Amazonia

description: 1. Modifications of Amazonian forests by pre-Columbian peoples are thought
 to have left ecological legacies that have persisted to the modern day.
 Most Amazonian palaeoecological records do not, however, provide the
 required temporal resolution to document the nuanced changes of
 pre-Columbian disturbance or post-disturbance succession and recovery,
 making it difficult to detect any direct, or indirect, ecological legacies
 on tree species. 2. Here, we investigate the fossil pollen, phytolith, and
 charcoal history of Lake Kumpaka, Ecuador, during the last 2415 years in
 c. 3-50 year time intervals to assess ecological legacies resulting from
 pre-Columbian forest modification, disturbance, cultivation, and fire
 usage. 3. Two cycles of pre-Columbian cultivation (one including slash-and
 burn cultivation, the other including slash-and-mulch cultivation) were
 documented in the record around 2150-1430 cal. yr BP and 1250-680 cal. yr
 BP, with following post-disturbance succession dynamics. Modern
 disturbance was documented after c. 10 cal. yr BP. The modern disturbance
 produced a plant composition unlike those of the two past disturbances, as
 fire frequencies reached their peak in the 2415-year record. The
 disturbance periods varied in intensity and duration, while the overturn
 of taxa following a disturbance lasted for hundreds of years. The recovery
 periods following pre-Columbian disturbance shared some similar patterns
 of early succession, but the longer-term recovery patterns differed. 4.
 Synthesis. The trajectories of change after a cessation of cultivation can
 be anticipated to differ depending on the intensity, scale, duration, and
 manner of the past disturbance. In the Kumpaka record, no evidence of
 persistent enrichment or depletion of intentionally altered taxa (i.e.
 direct legacy effects) was found but indirect legacy effects, however,
 were documented and have persisted to the modern day. These findings
 highlight the strengths of using empirical data to reconstruct past change
 rather than relying solely on modern plant populations to infer past human
 management and ecological legacies, and challenge some of the current
 hypotheses involving the persistence of pre-Columbian legacies on modern
 plant populations.
description: A sediment core was
 collected in July 2014 using a Colinvaux-Vohnout piston sampler
 (Colinvaux, De Oliveira & Moreno 1999) from 19.5 m water depth.
 The core sections were wrapped in the field, transported to Florida
 Institute of Technology, and stored at 4 °C. Samples (0.5
 cm<sup>3</sup>) for pollen (n = 126) and phytoliths (n = 131)
 were subsampled at 5-20 cm resolution and samples for charcoal (n =
 515) were subsampled at 1-5 cm resolution. Pollen samples were treated
 according to standard methodology (Fægri, Kaland & Krzywinski
 1989), including 10% HCl, 10% KOH, 10%
 NaP<sub>2</sub>O<sub>7</sub>, sonic bath,
 acetolysis (9:1 ratio of
 (CH<sub>3</sub>CO)<sub>2</sub>O and
 H<sub>2</sub>SO<sub>4</sub>), and heavy liquid
 flotation (sodium metatungstate, density: 2.0-2.1 g/mL). Pollen samples
 were spiked with exotic <i>Lycopodium</i> spores for the
 calculation of pollen concentrations (Stockmarr 1971). Pollen samples were
 mounted in glycerol and a minimum of 300 terrestrial pollen grains were
 counted per sample. Phytolith samples were treated according to standard
 methodology (Piperno 2006),
 including H<sub>2</sub>O<sub>2</sub>, HCl,
 KMnO<sub>4</sub>, and heavy liquid flotation (Bromoform
 (CHBr<sub>3</sub>), density: 2.3). A minimum of 200 phytoliths
 were counted in each sample. Charcoal samples were prepared according to
 standard methodology (Whitlock & Larse 2001; McMichael<i> et
 al.</i> 2012), including
 H<sub>2</sub>O<sub>2</sub> and filtering (160 µm
 size mesh). References: Colinvaux, P, De Oliveira, P
 & Moreno, E. 1999. Amazon: Pollen Manual and Atlas. Harwood
 Academic Press, New York. Fægri, K., Kaland, P.E. &
 Krzywinski, K. (1989) Textbook of pollen analysis. The Blackburn Press,
 New Jersey. McMichael, C., Piperno, D.R.,
 Bush, M.B., Silman, M.R., Zimmerman, A.R., Raczka, M.F. & Lobato,
 L.C. (2012) Sparse pre-Columbian human habitation in western Amazonia.
 Science, 336, 1429-1431. Piperno, D.R. (2006) Phytoliths:
 A comprehensive guide for archaeologists and paleoecologists. Alta Mira
 Press, Lanham, MD. Stockmarr, J. (1971) Tablets with
 spores used in absolute pollen analysis. Pollen et spores, 13,
 615-621. Whitlock, C. & Larse, C.
 (2001) Charcoal as a fire proxy., Tracking environmental change using lake
 sediments. Terrestrial, algal, and siliceous indicators. Eds Smol, JP,
 Birks, HJB & Last, WM. Kluwer, Dordrecht.
description: The Excel file includes fossil pollen, phytolith, and charcoal
 data from Lake Kumpak<sup>a</sup>, Ecuador. Data are available
 in raw counts for pollen and phytoliths and
 as mm<sup>3</sup>/cm<sup>3</sup> for charcoal. The
 data file includes four tabs: Site, Pollen, Phytolith, and
 Charcoal.
 File: Lake_Kumpaka_Ecuador_pol_phy_cha.xls