The environmental impacts of human societies are generally assumed to correlate with factors such as population size, whether they are industrialized, and the intensity of their landscape modifications (e.g., agriculture, urban development). As a result, small-scale communities with subsistence economies are often not the focus of long-term studies of environmental impact. However, comparing human-environment dynamics and their lasting ecological legacies across societies of different scales and forms of organization and production is important for understanding landscape change at regional to global scales. On Madagascar, ecological and cultural diversity, coupled with climatic variability, provide an important case study to examine the role of smaller-scale socioeconomic practices (e.g., fishing, foraging, and herding) on long-term ecological stability. Here, we use multispectral satellite imagery to compare long-term ecological impacts of different human livelihood strategies in SW Madagascar. Our results indicate that the nature of human-environmental dynamics between different socioeconomic communities are similar. Although some activities leave more subtle traces than others, geophysics highlight similar signatures across a landscape inhabited by communities practicing a range of subsistence strategies. Our results further demonstrate how Indigenous land stewardship is integrated into the very fabric of ecological systems in SW Madagascar with implications for conservation and sustainability.

中文翻译：

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地球物理学阐明了马达加斯加西南部觅食、畜牧和混合生存策略的长期社会生态动态


通常认为人类社会的环境影响与人口规模、是否工业化以及景观改造的强度（例如农业、城市发展）等因素相关。因此，具有自给经济的小规模社区往往不是环境影响长期研究的焦点。然而，比较不同规模、不同组织和生产形式的社会的人类环境动态及其持久的生态遗产对于理解区域到全球范围内的景观变化非常重要。在马达加斯加，生态和文化多样性以及气候变化为研究小规模社会经济实践（例如捕鱼、觅食和放牧）对长期生态稳定性的作用提供了重要的案例研究。在这里，我们使用多光谱卫星图像来比较马达加斯加西南部不同人类生计策略的长期生态影响。我们的结果表明，不同社会经济群体之间的人类环境动态的本质是相似的。尽管有些活动比其他活动留下了更微妙的痕迹，但地球物理学在实行一系列生存策略的社区所居住的景观中强调了类似的特征。我们的结果进一步证明了土著土地管理如何融入马达加斯加西南部生态系统的结构，对保护和可持续性产生影响。