RT info:eu-repo/semantics/article
T1 Colonial rainfed farming strategies in an extremely arid insular environment: Niche construction on Lanzarote, Canary Islands, Spain.
A1 Díaz Peña, Francisco Javier
A1 Stevenson, C. M.
A1 Naranjo Cigala, A.
A1 Ladefoged, T. N.
K1 Agriculture;
K1 Cochineal
K1 Ecodynamics
K1 Salinity
K1 Soil nutrients
K1 Water capture
AB The island of Lanzarote in the Canary Islands was first settled by people from northern Africa in the first millennium BC and then colonized by Spain in the late fifteenth century. This colonial legacyreflects an intensive land use driven by a European commodities market that experienced a series of boom-and-bust cycles. Although arid and seemingly resource limited, colonial farmers in the sixteenth to nineteenth centuries copied water capture techniques from the Indigenous population, were strategic in terms of field placement, and engaged in a range of niche construction techniques. An analysis of 420 soil samples for their chemical properties (e.g., pH, electrical conductivity, nutrients) has revealed that sixteenth to nineteenth agricultural infrastructure in the form of open fields, terraces, water capture basins, and mulched fields was constructed onthe landscape avoiding areas of high soil salinity and placement was tailored to variations in terrain slope, elevation, and rainfall. These improvements fundamentally changed ecosystem relations resulting in increased agricultural productivity. A series of eolian and volcanic events in the eighteenth century resulted in environmental changes requiring counteractive responses and new processes of niche reconfiguration. Large tracts of land were initially removed from production,but processes of niche construction created new opportunities. These included constructing mulched pits for cultivating sweet potato and tephra mulching for enhanced moisture conservation and accelerated growth of cochineal insect (Dactylopius coccus) production on cactus host plants. Cochineal production lasted for aperiod of sixty years (ca. AD 1825–1885) before a collapse of the market caused by the invention of chemical substitutes.
YR 2021
FD 2021
LK http://riull.ull.es/xmlui/handle/915/35965
UL http://riull.ull.es/xmlui/handle/915/35965
LA en
NO https://doi.org/10.1080/15564894.2021.1924898
DS Repositorio institucional de la Universidad de La Laguna
RD 12-sep-2024