Historical perspective is essential in order to understand the nature of the relationship between human activity and the environment and to evaluate long-term productivity of sustainability or impact. The introduction of livestock into Mexico in the sixteenth century modified the subsistence strategies of the indigenous population as well as the pre-existing dynamic equilibrium among the population, production systems, and the environment. This doctoral dissertation research will document the development of the livestock industry in the Coixtlahuaca Basin of northwestern Oaxaca, Mexico, and it will examine that industry's impact on the way of life of the population and on the regional environment over the last 450 years. This project will combine data from field observations with information derived from archival research. The investigator will map current and past land uses and will establish and date depositional sediment and paleosol sequences along several stream channels. He will review ethnohistorical sources from which information on land uses, economic activities, community boundaries, resource availability, droughts, crop failures, diseases and populations of the area will be extracted, and he will compare these data with those of the present. Our understanding of long-term processes relating to environmental and cultural systems remains limited. This study is unusual in its effort to delineate the man-land relationship in the past and to carry the relationship through to the present. The research will contribute to the scientific basis of our understanding of human-environmental relationships. The project also will provide an excellent opportunity for a promising young scholar to continue to develop independent research skills.
