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Adaptive Responses of Native Amazonians

  • 1st Edition
  • June 28, 2014
  • Raymond B. Hames
  • English
  • eBook
    9 7 8 - 1 - 4 8 3 2 - 9 4 2 3 - 0
Adaptive Responses of Native Amazonians investigates the adaptive responses of the aborigines of Amazonia from the ecological perspective within anthropology. The discussions are organized around the major modes of Amazonian subsistence (cultivation, hunting and fishing), nutrition, and settlement pattern. Comprised of 15 chapters, this volume begins with an overview of Amazonian ecosystems, citing environmental models of Amazonian adaptive behavior and sociocultural evolution as well as the problematic definition or measure of the concept of adaptation. The reader is then introduced to shifting cultivation among the Machiguenga, Native American inhabitants of the tropical rainforest of the Upper Amazon, and the Kuikuru, one of three Carib-speaking villages located at the headwaters of the Xingú River. Subsequent chapters focus on the adaptive strategies of the Wakuénai people to the oligotrophic rainforest of the Rio Negro Basin; neotropical hunting among the Aché of Eastern Paraguay; trekking by the Mekranoti-Kayapó Indians of Central Brazil in lowland South America; and fishing patterns among the Cocamilla Indians of Achual Tipishca in the Huallaga River Basin in northeastern Peru. The book also considers nutrition and settlement patterns among native Amazonians. This monograph will be a useful resource for anthropologists, scholars, specialists, and others who are interested in the general fields of human ecology, South American ethnology, and tropical studies.

Ecosystems of Disturbed Ground

  • 1st Edition
  • Volume 16
  • December 17, 1999
  • L.R. Walker
  • English
  • eBook
    9 7 8 - 0 - 0 8 - 0 5 5 0 8 4 - 8
As the human population inexorably grows, its cumulative impact on the Earth's resources is hard to ignore. The ability of the Earth to support more humans is dependent on the ability of humans to manage natural resources wisely. Because disturbance alters resource levels, effective management requires understanding of the ecology of disturbance. This book is the first to take a global approach to the description of both natural and anthropogenic disturbance regimes that physically impact the ground. Natural disturbances such as erosion, volcanoes, wind, herbivory, flooding and drought plus anthropogenic disturbances such as foresty, grazing, mining, urbanization and military actions are considered. Both disturbance impacts and the biotic recovery are addressed as well as the interactions of different types of disturbance. Other chapters cover processes that are important to the understanding of disturbance of all types including soil processes, nutrient cycles, primary productivity, succession, animal behaviour and competition. Humans react to disturbances by avoiding, exacerbating, or restoring them or by passing environmental legislation. All of these issues are covered in this book.Managers need better predictive models and robust data-collections that help determine both site-specfic and generalized responses to disturbance. Multiple disturbances have a complex effect on both physical and biotic processes as they interact. This book provides a wealth of detail about the process of disturbance and recovery as well as a synthesis of the current state of knowledge about disturbance theory, with extensive documentation.