Ecological Legacies of Pre-Columbian Settlements Evident in Palm Clusters of Neotropical Mountain Forests
Sebastian Fajardo, Sina Mohammadi, Jonas Gregorio de Souza, César Ardila, Alan Tapscott Baltar, Shaddai Heidgen, Maria Isabel Mayorga Hernández, Sylvia Mota de Oliveira, Fernando Montejo, Marco Moderato, Vinicius Peripato, Katy Puche, Carlos Reina, Juan Carlos Vargas, Frank W. Takes, Marco Madella
公開日: 2025/7/9
Abstract
Ancient populations markedly transformed Neotropical forests, yet the spatial extent of their ecological influence remains underexplored at high resolution. Here we present a deep learning and remote sensing based approach to estimate areas of pre-Columbian forest modification based on modern vegetation. We apply this method to high-resolution satellite imagery from the Sierra Nevada de Santa Marta, Colombia, as a demonstration of a scalable approach, to evaluate palm tree distributions in relation to archaeological infrastructure. Palms were significantly more abundant near archaeological sites with large infrastructure investment. The extent of the largest palm cluster indicates that ancient human-managed areas linked to major infrastructure sites may be up to two orders of magnitude bigger than indicated by current archaeological evidence alone. Our findings suggest that pre-Columbian populations influenced vegetation, fostering conditions conducive to palm proliferation, leaving a lasting ecological footprint. This may have lowered the logistical costs of establishing infrastructure-heavy settlements in less accessible locations.