Fuelwood Depletion in the VEP Simulation
VEP researchers were interested in how the ancestral Pueblo people impacted their environments. Ancestral Pueblo people used the piyon and juniper woodland surrounding their homes to supply firewood (“fuelwood”) for cooking and heating. The Village simulation showed that humans likely always depleted fuelwood resources where they were living. This figure shows the average distance simulated Pueblo families had to travel in order to gather fuelwood through time. Humans depleted fuelwood resources around their homes and generally had to travel farther and farther to get fuel, as can be seen by the general trend in the graph. The little wobbles in the blue line occur primarily due to climate changes; wet years were good years for tree growth, and this would temporarily reduce the average distance people had to travel to gather fuelwood.
Graph by R. Kyle Bocinsky |
