Ecological changes on SGang Gwaay over the last millennium: uncovering forest changes and avian activity with respect to human settlement and invasive species ...

• Main Author: Zvezdin, Alexandra Catalina
• Format: Text
• Language: English
• Published: Memorial University of Newfoundland 2023
• Subjects: haida
• Online Access: https://dx.doi.org/10.48336/2zcf-dy21; https://research.library.mun.ca/16021/

Haida Gwaii (British Columbia) is an archipelago of immense cultural importance to the Haida people and ecological importance for breeding seabirds. In the past millennia, the islands were exposed to multiple stressors (e.g., Indigenous use of the land, European colonisation, invasive species introduction), thus its ecosystems are likely to have changed greatly; however, historical ecosystem trends are unknown and drivers of change difficult to unveil with contemporary field monitoring programs alone. Archeological and anthropological accounts provide short time-scale knowledge about past vegetation and seabird monitoring programs date back to the ~1980s. Thus, understanding long-term cycles of seabird population decline and increase is difficult with these short time-scale and punctual data. This thesis addresses the lack of knowledge regarding ecosystem changes over millennia using a multi-proxy paleoecological approach to reconstruct past ecosystems of SGang Gwaay, Haida Gwaii and uncover vegetation and ...