The Project

How humans have shaped tropical forest composition and structure, and how biodiversity recovers following human disturbance lacks long-term observations. BLADEN LEGACY will address this critical knowledge gap by determining anthropogenic impacts on biodiversity in a Mesoamerican tropical forest over 13,000 years.

The destruction of tropical forests and loss of biodiversity is one of the greatest challenges humanity faces, threatening essential ecosystem services, including food security, the provisioning of medicines and the regulation of Earth’s climate. Developing datasets to understand how humans shaped ecosystems and how vegetation recovers following disturbance is critical for informed conservation strategies and securing global futures.

Despite extensive evidence of past landscape impacts by humans, processes of natural forest regeneration in response to the type, intensity, and duration of human disturbance lack data.

The multidisciplinary 5-year project couples past and modern biodiversity indicators at high spatial and chronological resolution in the Bladen Nature Reserve, southern Belize. The study will assess the influence of the range of past disturbances associated with the ancient Maya and their forebears to determine correlations of past vegetation management with modern forest composition and genomic variation in key economically important tree species. The results of the project will reveal insight into how humans have shaped tropical forests and provide critical baseline data on the effectiveness of natural regeneration to restore biodiversity in response to the range of human disturbances.