Methodologies for Reconstructing a Pastoral Landscape

Hunter, Richard

doi:10.1080/01615440903443359

Cited by 8 publications

(7 citation statements)

References 25 publications

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“…Finally, because ranch boundaries did not adhere to their legally prescribed shape and size, each ranch possessed a unique shape and size that generally exceeded the prescribed square of 776 ha (Hunter, 2010). Again, the greater area of pasture could increase the area of overlap between pasture and agricultural land used to estimate the LULCC.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…The colonial land-grant register is now preserved in the Archivo General de la Nación in Mexico City (Sluyter, 2002). The associated site descriptions allow many land grants to be relocated and mapped using GIS (Hunter, 2010). These maps then facilitate area calculations of LULCCs over time and space for an entire century.…”

Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…In general, as detailed in the literature, the land grants contain the awardee's name, the name of the jurisdiction where the ranch was to be sited, a description of the site intended to reduce ambiguity about its borders, and the calendar date the grant was notarized by the scribe in Mexico City (Hunter, 2009(Hunter, , 2014Hunter and Sluyter, 2011;Sluyter, 1999Sluyter, , 2002. The land grants for sheep ranches also stipulate a north-south oriented square of 776 ha and a stocking rate of 2000 head as the minimum necessary to retain grant ownership (Hunter, 2010). The site descriptions vary greatly in detail and may reference conspicuous landscapes features such as large trees or waterholes, toponyms of nearby settlements or mountains, the names of adjacent landowners, roads and stock trails, streambeds and whether they carry water, and vegetation and soil characteristics.…”

Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Through a combination of field and archival research, the ranches can be mapped in a GIS (Hunter, 2010(Hunter, , 2014. This approach permits the reconstruction of spatio-temporal patterns of LULCC that occurred in the study area during the first century of colonization as the native population collapsed and cropland was converted into pastureland, as also occurred in other parts of New Spain.…”

Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Sixteenth-century soil carbon sequestration rates based on Mexican land-grant documents

Hunter

Sluyter

2015

The Holocene

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A significant gap in our understanding of global change involves the linkages between historical land-use and land-cover change (LULCC), Holocene terrestrial carbon (C) pool fluxes, and climate change. To address that research problem, this method uses land grants for sheep ranches awarded in early colonial (1521-1620 CE) Mexico to quantify the amount of land converted from cropland to pastureland. Soil is the largest terrestrial C pool, and converting cropland to pastureland significantly increases soil C sequestration rates, thereby reducing atmospheric C. The land grants and associated archival documents contain location-specific information about soils, vegetation, hydrology, and other variables that make it possible to map the ranches in a Geographic Information System (GIS) and quantify LULCCs and terrestrial C pools over time and space. The results demonstrate the utility of such archival documents to research on Holocene global change, indicate that LULCC during Mexico's colonial period increased the region's soil C sequestration rate, and confirm previous research that has suggested that transformations associated with European colonization of the Americas acted as an anthropogenic contributor to the period of moderate cooling known as the 'Little Ice Age' (1550-1850 CE).

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Sixteenth-century soil carbon sequestration rates based on Mexican land-grant documents

Hunter

Sluyter

2015

The Holocene

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“…3 Different methodologies are a key reason for these discrepant conclusions. 4 A more personal reason is that we tend to write causal sequences of past environmental change in such a way that they yield meaningful stories. 5 This implicates the narrative form of scholarly writing, our initial motives for conducting the study, subconscious biases in data collection and interpretation, and so on.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Grammatical subjects, ‘Hell is other people’, and irreprehensible nature

Hunter

2016

cultural geographies

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This piece takes the scholarly debate over the causes of environmental change in the Mezquital Valley of Mexico as a starting point from which to explore an understudied aspect of humannature relations. I first inspect English grammar -grammatical subjects in particular -to reveal how scholars who reach discrepant conclusions about environmental change face the disruptive subjectivities of one another. The discussion then draws in Jean-Paul Sartre's well-known statement that 'Hell is other people' to show how subjectivity has given rise to a class of negative sentiments that we apply to other people but not to nature or any element thereof. I conclude by describing an essential difference between our interpersonal relations and our individual relations with nature, what must happen for Sartre's definition of Hell to broaden, and how nature emerges free of our judgment.

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