Skip to main content

Thank you for visiting nature.com. You are using a browser version with limited support for CSS. To obtain the best experience, we recommend you use a more up to date browser (or turn off compatibility mode in Internet Explorer). In the meantime, to ensure continued support, we are displaying the site without styles and JavaScript.

  • Matters Arising
  • Published:

W. W. Oswald et al. reply

The Original Article was published on 20 July 2020

The Original Article was published on 20 July 2020

This is a preview of subscription content, access via your institution

Access options

Buy this article

Prices may be subject to local taxes which are calculated during checkout

Fig. 1: Postglacial palaeoenvironmental and archaeological data from SNE.

Data availability

The data that support the findings of this study are available from the corresponding author upon request.

References

  1. Oswald, W. W. et al. Conservation implications of limited Native American impacts in pre-contact New England. Nat. Sustain. 3, 241–246 (2020).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  2. Roos, C. I. Scale in the study of Indigenous burning. Nat. Sustain. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41893-020-0579-5 (2020).

  3. Abrams, M. D. & Nowacki, G. J. Native American imprint in palaeoecology. Nat. Sustain. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41893-020-0578-6 (2020).

  4. Abrams, M. D. & Nowacki, G. J. Native Americans as active and passive promoters of mast and fruit trees in the eastern USA. Holocene 18, 1123–1137 (2008).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  5. Mann, C. C. 1491: New Revelations of the Americas Before Columbus (Knopf, 2005).

  6. Canuto, M. A. et al. Ancient lowland Maya complexity as revealed by airborne laser scanning of northern Guatemala. Science 361, 1355–1371 (2018).

    Article  CAS  Google Scholar 

  7. Snow, D. The Iroquois (Wiley-Blackwell, 1996).

  8. Day, G. M. The Indian as an ecological factor in the northeastern forest. Ecology 34, 329–346 (1953).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  9. Cronon, W. Changes in the Land: Indians, Colonists, and the Ecology of New England (Hill & Wang, 1983).

  10. Whitney G. G. From Coastal Wilderness to Fruited Plain (Cambridge Univ. Press, 1994).

  11. Nowacki, G. J. & Abrams, M. D. The demise of fire and “mesophication” of forests in the eastern United States. BioScience 58, 123–138 (2008).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  12. Cogbill, C. V., Burk, J. & Motzkin, G. The forests of presettlement New England, USA: spatial and compositional patterns based on town proprietor surveys. J. Biogeogr. 29, 1279–1304 (2002).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  13. Oswald, W. W. et al. Subregional variability in the response of New England vegetation to postglacial climate change. J. Biogeogr. 45, 2375–2388 (2018).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  14. Shuman, B. N., Marsicek, J., Oswald, W. W. & Foster, D. R. Predictable hydrological and ecological responses to Holocene North Atlantic variability. Proc. Natl Acad. Sci. USA 116, 5985–5990 (2019).

    Article  CAS  Google Scholar 

  15. Foster, D. R., Motzkin, G. & Slater, B. Land-use history as long-term broad-scale disturbance: regional forest dynamics in central New England. Ecosystems 1, 96–119 (1998).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  16. McEwan, R. W., Dyer, J. M. & Pederson, N. Multiple interacting ecosystem drivers: toward an encompassing hypothesis of oak forest dynamics across eastern North America. Ecography 34, 244–256 (2011).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  17. Pederson, N. et al. Climate remains an important driver of post-European vegetation change in the eastern United States. Glob. Change Biol. 20, 2105–2110 (2014).

    Google Scholar 

  18. Thompson, J. R., Carpenter, D. N., Cogbill, C. V. & Foster, D. R. Four centuries of change in northeastern United States forests. PLoS ONE 8, e72540 (2013).

    Article  CAS  Google Scholar 

  19. Patterson, W. A. III in Fire in Eastern Oak Forests: Delivering Science to Land Managers (ed. Dickinson, M. B.) 2–19 (US Department of Agriculture, Forest Service, Northern Research Station, 2006).

  20. Patterson, W. A. III & Sassaman, K. E. in Holocene Human Ecology in Northeastern North America (ed. Nicholas, G. P.) 107–135 (Plenum, 1988).

  21. Marlon, J., Bartlein, P. J. & Whitlock, C. Fire–fuel–climate linkages in the northwestern USA during the Holocene. Holocene 16, 1059–1071 (2006).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  22. Munoz, S. E. & Gajewski, K. Distinguishing prehistoric human influence on late-Holocene forests in southern Ontario, Canada. Holocene 20, 967–981 (2010).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  23. Lynch, E. A., Hotchkiss, S. C. & Calcote, R. Charcoal signatures defined by multivariate analysis of charcoal records from 10 lakes in northwest Wisconsin (USA). Quat. Res. 75, 125–137 (2011).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  24. Calder, W. J. et al. Medieval warming initiated exceptionally large wildfire outbreaks in the Rocky Mountains. Proc. Natl Acad. Sci. USA 112, 13261–13266 (2015).

  25. Chilton, E. S. in Northeast Subsistence-Settlement Change: A.D. 700–A.D. 1300 (eds Hart, J. & Reith, C.) 289–300 (New York State Museum, 2002).

  26. Josselyn, J. Two Voyages to New England (E. W. Metcalf & Co., 1833).

  27. Chilton, E. S. in Ancient Complexities: New Perspectives in Pre-Columbian North America (ed. Alt, S.) 96–103 (Univ. of Utah Press, 2010).

  28. Archer, G. Gosnold’s Settlement at Cuttyhunk (Old South Work, 1902).

  29. Thomas, P. A. In the Maelstrom of Change: The Indian Trade and Cultural Process in the Middle Connecticut River Valley 1635–1665. PhD thesis, Univ. of Massachusetts, Amherst (1979).

  30. Clark, J. S. & Royall, P. D. Transformation of a northern hardwood forest by aboriginal (Iroquois) fire: charcoal evidence from Crawford Lake, Ontario, Canada. Holocene 5, 1–9 (1995).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  31. Chilton, E. S. in Oxford Handbook of North American Archaeology (ed. Pauketat, T.) 262–272 (Oxford Univ. Press, 2012).

Download references

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

Authors

Contributions

W.W.O. and D.R.F. wrote the first version of the paper. W.W.O., D.R.F., B.N.S., E.S.C., D.L.Doucette and D.L.Duranleau contributed to the final version.

Corresponding author

Correspondence to W. Wyatt Oswald.

Ethics declarations

Competing interests

The authors declare no competing interests.

Additional information

Publisher’s note Springer Nature remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations.

Rights and permissions

Reprints and permissions

About this article

Check for updates. Verify currency and authenticity via CrossMark

Cite this article

Oswald, W.W., Foster, D.R., Shuman, B.N. et al. W. W. Oswald et al. reply. Nat Sustain 3, 900–903 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41893-020-0580-z

Download citation

  • Received:

  • Accepted:

  • Published:

  • Issue Date:

  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/s41893-020-0580-z

Search

Quick links

Nature Briefing

Sign up for the Nature Briefing newsletter — what matters in science, free to your inbox daily.

Get the most important science stories of the day, free in your inbox. Sign up for Nature Briefing