Abstract
Model systems enlightened by history that provide understanding and inform contemporary and future landscapes are needed. Through transdisciplinary collaboration, historic rice fields of the southeastern United States can be such models, providing insight into how human–ecological systems work. Rice culture in the United States began in the 1670s; was primarily successfully developed, managed, and driven by the labor of enslaved persons; and ended with the U.S. Civil War. During this time, wetlands were transformed into highly managed farming systems that left behind a system of land use legacies when abandoned after slavery. Historically accepted estimates range from 29,950 to 60,703 ha; however, using remotely sensed data (e.g., LiDAR) and expert opinion, we mapped 95,551 ha of historic rice fields in South Carolina, USA. After mapping, the rice fields’ current wetland and land cover characteristics were assessed. Understanding the geographic distribution and characteristics allows insight into the overall human and ecological costs of forced land use change that can inform future landscapes.
Highlights
South Carolina was chosen because it was the epicenter of rice culture in the southeastern United States during the Antebellum period and there has been work to identify historic rice fields there previously that can serve as a benchmark for comparison; LiDAR was readily available for the study area; and there has been and continues to be high interest in historic rice fields for social, cultural, and conservation reasons in South Carolina
Using ArcGIS Online (AGOL), we developed an application where all remotely sensed data, were accessible to use as a workspace for heads-up digitizing of rice fields
By delineating the full extent of historic rice fields in South Carolina, we provide the physical boundaries of these landscape legacies, which is the basis for beginning the process of embedding the human condition of the past and present within the ecological condition of the rice fields
Summary
Despite the staggering global scale of our recent influence on ecosystem patterns and processes, some of the most profound changes to particular regions and landscapes happened during historical periods [2,3]. Features created by humans for agricultural uses and the environments that accompanied them are frequently not counted in current models of ecosystem function and constitute missing sources of variation [2]. Studies attempting to explain current distributions of species are improved by knowing the extent of anthropogenic landscape features, as historically modified ecosystems may influence what is currently observed [6,7]. Wetlands are important ecosystems globally for ecosystem function and are incompletely mapped; little is known about how and where they were modified historically, 4.0/)
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