Date of Award

Spring 5-10-2025

Level of Access Assigned by Author

Open-Access Thesis

Degree Name

Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)

Department

Ecology and Environmental Sciences

First Committee Advisor

Jacquelyn Gill

Second Committee Member

Shawn Fraver

Third Committee Member

Chris Guiterman

Additional Committee Members

Brian McGill

Bonnie Newsom

Abstract

People are inherently part of the natural world and have shaped ecosystems across thousands of years of climate and environmental changes. Given the complex, interconnected nature of coupled natural-human systems, the relative influence of people can be difficult to disentangle from the effects of climate or natural processes, particularly when it comes to fire. Paleoecology offers a growing suite of tools that are being used to disentangle past relationships between people, climate, and the environment and their influence on fire regimes over time, and there is a growing interest among Western scientists in understanding Indigenous fire management. However, this work must be done with care and respect for descendent communities, as Western scientific research has historically been used as a justification for stripping Indigenous peoples of their rights and forced removal from their homelands. Since the late 1990’s, there has been a growing movement within the research community to decolonize methodologies, create more equitable practices, and address power dynamics of research in Indigenous homelands. This increased awareness has resulted in a growing body of literature demonstrating the benefits of including Indigenous Knowledges (IK) in research and a commitment to conducting research that centers Indigenous sovereignty, agency, and right to self-determination.

This dissertation uses paleoecological tools to explore relationships past peoples had with what is today called Maine and addresses the knowledge gap of how fire and people shaped vegetation at the local scale throughout the Holocene. In Chapter 1, I provide an overview of the dissertation. In Chapter 2, I explore the anthropogenic and climatic drivers of fire regimes in central and coastal Maine over the Holocene using sedimentary charcoal, pollen, and fecal biomarkers in conjunction with historical and oral records. In Chapter 3, I examine the motivations for burning and how fire allowed people to buffer themselves and their environment from the effects of rapid climate change. I use sedimentary charcoal, pollen, and fecal biomarkers to reconstruct past environments and the role people played in shaping them. In Chapter 4, I provide a methodological grounding for charcoal and differing depositional environments to detect anthropogenic fire using a combination of charcoal and historical records. Finally, in Chapter 5 I conduct a meta-analysis of the inclusion of Indigenous values in the field of fire ecology and how they have changed over the last 10 years.

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