PANTROPOCENE – Finding a Pre-industrial, Pan-tropical 'Anthropocene'

Anthropocene Engine Extreme Events and Shocks Great Acceleration Observatory Project The Anthropocene Bioshpere The Technosphere as a Complex System Tipping Points and Major Transitions Transformations of Collective Behavior Land Use Change and Regenerative Practices

The ERC-funded project PANTROPOCENE will study the degree to which combined pre-colonial and colonial impacts on tropical forests across the bounds of the former Spanish Empire, particularly across the under-studied region of the Philippine Archipelago, initiated changes to climate, geomorphology, and the atmosphere and whether such feedbacks represent the origins of a pre-industrial 'Anthropocene'.
 

© PANTROPOCENE; Hans Sell

Tropical forests are globally recognised as biodiversity hotspots and environments that are crucial for climate regulation, landscape stability, and the carbon cycle. Combined effects of local deforestation can have regional and global feedbacks and 20th-21st century human actions in tropical forests are seen as a key part of the ‘Anthropocene’ – or the epoch in which humans have come to dominate earth systems. However, did pre-industrial human impacts on these environments also have similar earth systems effects? And how did these impacts and their consequences vary through time?

The PANTROPOCENE project focuses on pre-colonial and colonial land use across the bounds of the former Spanish Empire to provide a ‘pan-tropical’ perspective on this question. The project is undertaking novel palaeoenvironmental, archaeological and remotee sensing survey and fieldwork, as well as historical archival analysis, in the Philippine Archipelago, the often-neglected centre of the Spanish East Indies. Combined with compilation of existing palaeoenvironmental, archaeological, and historical records from the Neotropics, the project seeks to ensure full tropical coverage of the Spanish Empire.

The resulting regional characterisations of land use on pre-colonial, colonial, and industrial timescales will be used to determine how different forms of technology, subsistence, and administrative organization may have had varying feedbacks on different parts of the Earth system. In turn, this will inform understandings of the pace and threat of contemporary land-use changes in the context of endemic Island Southeast Asian biodiversity and the tropics more broadly.

Map of the Spanish Empire around 1800 relative to the modern extent of tropical forests including a zoomed in view of the Philippine Archipelago

The project is closely coordinated with the School of Archaeology at the University of the Philippines, with further collaborations with scholars from Ateneo University, the University of Calgary, and University of California Los Angeles. PANTROPOCENE hosted a core project workshop at the University of the Philippines in order to facilitate access for local scholars working in archaeology, history, remote sensing, and palaeoclimate science and to ensure a lasting impact of its multidisciplinary approach on research in the region. It also was a core part of the research featured as part of the Max Planck Society’s yearbook in 2023.

 

With thanks to Hans Sell for the Logo and Figure artwork.
 

Publications

  • Roberts, P., Caetano-Andrade, V.L., Fisher, M., Hamilton, R., Rudd, R., Stokes, F., Amano, N., Antonosyan, M., Dugmore, A., Findley, D.M., Freire, V.Z., Furquim, L.P., Fletcher, M-S., Hambrecht, G., Heddell-Stevens, P., Iminjili, V., Jha, D., Jha, G., Kinyanjui, R., Maezumi, S.Y., Morrison, K.D., Renn, J., Stevenson, J., Winkelmann, R., Ziegler, M., Scarborough, V., White, S., Degroot, D., Green, A.S., Isendahl, C. 2024. Uncovering the multi-biome environmental and Earth system legacies of past human societies. Annual Review of Environment and Resources. https://doi.org/10.1146/annurev-environ-112321-101257
  • Los, S., Winkelmann, R., Roberts, P. 2024. Exploring tropical forest aboveground carbon dynamics via modelled landscapes of varied food production, past and present. Plants, people, planet, 10608.
  • Findley, D.M., Amano, N., Biong, I., Bankoff, G., Dacudao, P.I., Gealogo, F., Hamilton, R., Pagunsan, R., Roberts, P. 2024. Colonial policy, ecological transformations, and agricultural “improvement”: comparing agricultural yields and expansion in the Spanish and U.S. Philippines, 1870-1925 CE. Humanities and Social Sciences Communications 11: 839. https://doi.org/10.1057/s41599-024-03310-z
  • Findley, D.M., Roberts, P. 2024. Cultivating wheat in the Philippines, ca. 1600-1800 CE: why a grain was not adopted by local populations. International Journal of Historical Archaeology: s10761-024-00753-7. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10761-024-00753-7
  • Hamilton, R., Amano, N., Bradshaw, C.J.A., Saltré, F., Patalano, R., Penny, D., Stevenson, J., Wolfhagen, J., Roberts, P. 2024. Forest mosaics, not savanna corridors, dominated in Southeast Asia during the Last Glacial Maximum. Proceedings of the Nagtional Academy of Sciences of the United States of America 121, e2311280120: 1-8.
  • Roberts, P., Kaplan, J., Findley, D.M., Hamilton, R.J., Caetano Andrade, V.L., Amano, N., Kay, A., Renn, J., Winkelmann, R. Mapping our reliance on the tropics can reveal the roots of the Anthropocene. Nature Ecology & Evolution s41559-023-01998-x.
  • Roberts, P., Hixon, S., Hamilton, R.J., Lucas, M., Ilgner, J., Marzo, S., Hawkins, S., Luu, S., Gosden, C., Spriggs, M., Summerhayes, G. 2023. Assessing Pleistocene-Holocene climatic and environmental change in insular Near Oceania using stable isotope analysis of archaeological fauna. Journal of Quaternary Science 38: 1267-1278.
  • Patalano, R., Arthur, C., Carleton, W.C., Challis, S., Dewar, G., Gayantha, K., Gleixner, G., Ilgner J., Lucas, M., Marzo, S., Mokhachane, R., Pazan, K., Spurite, D., Morley, M.W., Parker, A., Mitchell, P., Stewart, B.A., Roberts, P. 2023. Ecological stability of Late Pleistocene-to-Holocene Lesotho southern Africa, facilitated human upland habitation. Communications Earth & Environment 4: 129. https://doi.org/10.1038/s43247-023-00784-8
  • Findley, D.M., Acabado, S., Amano, N., Kay, A.U., Hamilton, R.J., Barretto-Tesoro, G., Bankoff, G., Kaplan, J.O., Roberts, P. 2022. Land use change in a pericolonial society: intensification and diversification in Ifugao, Philippines between 1570 and 1800 CE. Frontiers in Earth Science 10: 680926.
  • Roberts, P., Douka, K., Tromp, M., Bedford, S., Hawkins, S., Bouffandeau, L., Ilgner, J., Lucas, M., Marzo, S., Hamilton, R.J., Ambrose, W., Bulbeck, D., Luu, S., Shing, R., Gosden, C., Summerhayes, G., Spriggs, M. 2022. Fossils, fish and tropical forests: prehistoric human adaptations on the island frontiers of Oceania. Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society of London, Series B: Biological Sciences 377: 20200495.
  • Roberts, P., Hamilton, R., Piperno, D. Tropical forests as key sites of the ‘Anthropocene’: Past and present perspectives. 2021. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America 118: e2109243118.
  • Hamilton, R., Wolfhagen, J., Amano, N., Boivin, N., Findley, D.M., Iriarte, J., Kaplan, J.O., Stevenson, J., Roberts, P. 2021. Non-uniform tropical forest responses to the ‘Columbian Exchange’ in the Neotropics and Asia-Pacific. Nature Ecology & Evolution 5: 1174–1184.
  • Roberts, P., Buhrich, A., Caetano-Andrade, V.L., Cosgrove, R., Fairbairn, A., Florin, S.A., Vanwezer, N., Boivin, N., Hunter, B., Mosquito, D., Turpin, G., Ferrier, A. Reimagining the relationship between Gondwanan forests and Aboriginal land management in Australia’s “Wet Tropics”. iScience 24: 102190. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.isci.2021.102190.
  • Louys, J., Roberts, P. 2020. Environmental drivers of megafauna and hominin extinction in Southeast Asia. Nature 586: 402-406.
  • Amano, N., Bankoff, G., Findley, D.M., Barretto-Tesoro, G., Roberts, P. 2020. Archaeological and historical insights into the ecological impacts of pre-colonial and colonial introductions in to the Philippine Archipelago. The Holocene DOI: https://doi.org/10.1177/0959683620941152

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