Indigenous and colonial influences on Amazonian forests

Abstract

Societal Impact Statement

Global climate models that incorporate carbon sources and sinks usually consider that forest uptake of carbon is in a state of equilibrium. Both historical and paleoecological records suggest that this is commonly not the case for Amazonia. Here, the impacts of colonial practices on Amazonian Indigenous peoples and forests are reviewed. Human activities affect forests' successional stages, trajectories, and species composition. By increasing the spatial coverage of paleoecological records that focus on pre‐ and post‐Columbian periods, the long‐term interactions between humans and Amazonian forests and their role in affecting Earth's climate may be better understood.

Summary

Legacy effects left by the activities of Indigenous people in Amazonia are well known. Although severe, widespread, and recently occurring, the impacts left post‐1492 CE have been less investigated. We review the impact of colonial practices on Indigenous peoples and Amazonian forests. We suggest that forests comprise the sum of their past events, in a mosaic of different cumulative successional trajectories depending on the type, frequency, intensity, and timing of human influence. In regions with a history of minimal human influence, old‐growth species sensitive to fire would be the dominant landscape. In regions with high pre‐Columbian and low colonial influence, old‐growth forests carrying pre‐Columbian ecological legacies would be prevalent. Regions occupied by Indigenous groups post‐1492 CE would also carry similar ecological legacies. In regions influenced by the Jesuits, mid‐successional forests are expected to be enriched with cacao trees. In regions of latex extraction during the rubber boom, mid‐growth forests would present high abundances of early and mid‐successional species and depletion of some species. In deforested areas, we expect early successional forests with influence of exotic useful species. This patchwork of history probably plays a large role in shaping today's forests, and the biodiversity and carbon dynamics documented within them. Paleoecological work focusing on the last millennium, although scarce, has the potential to detect these mosaics of past human influence, and they should be considered when estimating forest ages and successional stages across the basin.