Amazonian Dark Earths in Western Amazonia?

Molecular signature and sources of biochemical recalcitrance of organic C in Amazonian Dark Earths

Amazonian Dark Earths (ADE) are a unique type of soils developed through intense anthropogenic activities that transformed the original soils into Anthrosols throughout the Brazilian Amazon Basin. We conducted a comparative molecularlevel investigation of soil organic C (SOC) speciation in ADE (ages between 600 and 8700 years B.P.) and adjacent soils using ultraviolet photo-oxidation coupled wi...

Locating Amazonian Dark Earths (ADE) using vegetation vigour as a surrogate for soil type

Convergent Adaptations: Bitter Manioc Cultivation Systems in Fertile Anthropogenic Dark Earths and Floodplain Soils in Central Amazonia

Shifting cultivation in the humid tropics is incredibly diverse, yet research tends to focus on one type: long-fallow shifting cultivation. While it is a typical adaptation to the highly-weathered nutrient-poor soils of the Amazonian terra firme, fertile environments in the region offer opportunities for agricultural intensification. We hypothesized that Amazonian people have developed divergen...

Regionalism and Cultural Identity in Western Amazonia

Cover Page Footnote: Acknowledgments. This paper was first written for the conference “Comparative Arawakan Histories” organized by Jonathan Hill and Fernando Santos-Granero, held at the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute in Panama in July 2000. I am grateful to all of the participants in that conference for their helpful comments on and generous tolerance of this marginal Aruan case. I am...

Miocene flooding events of western Amazonia

There is a considerable controversy about whether western Amazonia was ever covered by marine waters during the Miocene [23 to 5 Ma (million years ago)]. We investigated the possible occurrence of Miocene marine incursions in the Llanos and Amazonas/Solimões basins, using sedimentological and palynological data from two sediment cores taken in eastern Colombia and northwestern Brazil together w...