QRC members lead and participate in a wide range of disciplinary and interdisciplinary research projects from the study of past earth climates and glaciations to shifts in the geographic distributions and evolution of vegetation and faunal communities, to the evolution and dispersals of the genus Homo and the increasing scales of human modification of earth environments through the Holocene. QRC provides a venue for meeting and collaborating with scholars across Quaternary disciplines. We are also fortunate to be able to provide seed funding and small grants for member research projects. We are especially happy to support grad student and junior scholar research activities, much of which leads to larger, external funding from agencies like the National Science Foundation.
Spatial Resilience as a Basis for Cultural Landscape Preservation: Towards an Assessment of Long-term Environmental Heritage Value in the Agrarian Chengdu Plain
Abstract: The agrarian linpan (wooded lots) landscape of the Chengdu Plain in Sichuan, China, is a unique socio-ecological landscape supporting an exceptionally large rural and urban population, including urban centers of exceptional spatial stability over a very long history. The landscape is distinctive for its high rural population density; dispersed (nonnucleated) distribution of dwelling sites; high forest cover; biodiversity of both crop and non-economic plant species; irrigation that maintains sediment recharge of cultivated soil; and flood management success without dependence on levees, dikes or dams. Within this landscape, a single linpan is a relatively small site/cluster of rural dwellings (typically 1-9 households) that also includes a surrounding grove of bamboo and other tree types separated from other linpan at short distances by water channels, rice paddies and fields. In other high-yield cultivated landscapes of any age, either elsewhere in China or globally, this dwelling form and pattern of settlement is highly unusual; larger nucleated villages sited at greater distances are the norm. This proposal seeks support for research to help bridge some of the gaps in understanding between what is known of the landscape’s prehistoric morphology, and what can be gleaned from historically documentable and currently observable morphological features of greater or lesser stability. The research has potential significance not only for scientific understanding of socio-ecological resilience, but also applications to pressing developmental policy concerns.
Rock climbing in the Quaternary: A pilot biomechanical study of rock climbing grips compared with under-branch suspensory grips
Abstract: The functional morphology of the upper limb and hand in fossil hominins speaks persuasively to the importance of compromise in our evolutionary history. Features indicative morphological commitment to fine prehensile abilities of the hand, and presumably tool behaviors, are balanced with morphologies well-suited to creatures for whom arboreal behaviors form a significant part their locomotor repertoire. Further, these features are coupled with morphological evidence in the lower limb indicative of obligate bipedalism. Historically, the maintenance of more primitive – that is, climbing-advantageous – upper limb features have been interpreted to indicate stabilizing selection for those traits: the continued relevance of an arboreal lifestyle either as a means to escape large cursorial predators, as sleeping sites, or to utilize food resources located in trees.
Abstract: The agrarian linpan (wooded lots) landscape of the Chengdu Plain in Sichuan, China, is a unique socio-ecological landscape supporting an exceptionally large rural and urban population, including urban centers of exceptional spatial stability over a very long history. The landscape is distinctive for its high rural population density; dispersed (nonnucleated) distribution of dwelling sites; high forest cover; biodiversity of both crop and non-economic plant species; irrigation that maintains sediment recharge of cultivated soil; and flood management success without dependence on levees, dikes or dams. Within this landscape, a single linpan is a relatively small site/cluster of rural dwellings (typically 1-9 households) that also includes a surrounding grove of bamboo and other tree types separated from other linpan at short distances by water channels, rice paddies and fields. In other high-yield cultivated landscapes of any age, either elsewhere in China or globally, this dwelling form and pattern of settlement is highly unusual; larger nucleated villages sited at greater distances are the norm. This proposal seeks support for research to help bridge some of the gaps in understanding between what is known of the landscape’s prehistoric morphology, and what can be gleaned from historically documentable and currently observable morphological features of greater or lesser stability. The research has potential significance not only for scientific understanding of socio-ecological resilience, but also applications to pressing developmental policy concerns.