ramonmercado
CyberPunk
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Not sure where to post this, an erudite Mod may find an appropriate Thread.
In the 1570s, when King Philip II of Spain sent emissaries to survey the flora and fauna of villages in central and southern Spain, he wasn’t thinking about ecological networks or extinction. He just wanted to know exactly what he owned. So, he asked at least two people in each village to describe the land, flora, and fauna of their territory to his surveyors. Now, 450 years later, a team of ecologists says the resulting answers to that survey have value as ecological surveys, taken before the word “ecology” entered the lexicon.
This 15th century drawing of bears in the wild represents what newly studied questionnaires reveal about the ecology, including the presence of brown bears, in historic Spain. GASTON PHEBUS © BIBLIOTHEQUE MAZARINE/© ARCHIVES CHARMET/BRIDGEMAN IMAGES
“I think it’s brilliant,” said Ana Rodrigues, a conservation biologist at the Center of Functional and Evolutionary Ecology in France who was not part of the research. “The survey was a historical document and now it becomes ecological data.”
The new work was done by Duarte Viana, an ecologist at the Doñana Biological Station (part of Spain’s National Research Council), and his colleagues. They used the answers to the king’s questionnaires and transcriptions from historians to create a list of plants, animals, and their respective ecological niches, providing an environmental snapshot of Castile, a large kingdom that was in modern-day central and southern Spain, from nearly 500 years ago. In their work, published recently in Ecology, they found various animals that lived and roamed across central Spain are now restricted to the north of Spain, whereas some plants that are abundant in the country now weren’t around in the 16th century.
Other similar inventories based on historical documents do exist, Viana says. For instance, researchers in 2018 gathered ecological information from 400 years ago using a 17th century natural history text from Scotland, but that text was also a science text, Viana explains, making his team’s work—using a document that was not an obvious work of science—unique.
Viana’s team chose to analyze questionnaires from 1574, 1575, and 1578. King Philip II had villagers in the kingdom answer questions about plants and animals, how people made a living, available natural resources such as wood, and social organization, including the number of households in a given village.
The locals, who may not have been literate, likely told their responses to the surveyors, who wrote them down in old Castilian. Then, early 20th century historians translated these responses into modern Spanish. Viana and his team mostly used these transcriptions to make sense of the old documents. ...
https://www.science.org/content/art...ury-provide-unprecedented-ecological-snapshot
Surveys commissioned by 16th century Spanish king provide unprecedented ecological snapshot
Inventory of plants and animals could be used for modern conservation efforts
- 4 AUG 2022 12:30 PM BY VIVIANA FLORES
In the 1570s, when King Philip II of Spain sent emissaries to survey the flora and fauna of villages in central and southern Spain, he wasn’t thinking about ecological networks or extinction. He just wanted to know exactly what he owned. So, he asked at least two people in each village to describe the land, flora, and fauna of their territory to his surveyors. Now, 450 years later, a team of ecologists says the resulting answers to that survey have value as ecological surveys, taken before the word “ecology” entered the lexicon.
This 15th century drawing of bears in the wild represents what newly studied questionnaires reveal about the ecology, including the presence of brown bears, in historic Spain. GASTON PHEBUS © BIBLIOTHEQUE MAZARINE/© ARCHIVES CHARMET/BRIDGEMAN IMAGES
“I think it’s brilliant,” said Ana Rodrigues, a conservation biologist at the Center of Functional and Evolutionary Ecology in France who was not part of the research. “The survey was a historical document and now it becomes ecological data.”
The new work was done by Duarte Viana, an ecologist at the Doñana Biological Station (part of Spain’s National Research Council), and his colleagues. They used the answers to the king’s questionnaires and transcriptions from historians to create a list of plants, animals, and their respective ecological niches, providing an environmental snapshot of Castile, a large kingdom that was in modern-day central and southern Spain, from nearly 500 years ago. In their work, published recently in Ecology, they found various animals that lived and roamed across central Spain are now restricted to the north of Spain, whereas some plants that are abundant in the country now weren’t around in the 16th century.
Other similar inventories based on historical documents do exist, Viana says. For instance, researchers in 2018 gathered ecological information from 400 years ago using a 17th century natural history text from Scotland, but that text was also a science text, Viana explains, making his team’s work—using a document that was not an obvious work of science—unique.
Viana’s team chose to analyze questionnaires from 1574, 1575, and 1578. King Philip II had villagers in the kingdom answer questions about plants and animals, how people made a living, available natural resources such as wood, and social organization, including the number of households in a given village.
The locals, who may not have been literate, likely told their responses to the surveyors, who wrote them down in old Castilian. Then, early 20th century historians translated these responses into modern Spanish. Viana and his team mostly used these transcriptions to make sense of the old documents. ...
https://www.science.org/content/art...ury-provide-unprecedented-ecological-snapshot
