Achievement

James Taylor, Cohort II: Three times I have gone to Jiuzhaigou National Park in China on short interdisciplinary research trips organized by the MCCE IGERT at the University of Washington. Collaborating with graduate students in anthropology, biology, geology and forestry from UW as well as faculty and graduate students from Sichuan University as resulted in major changes the perception of human impacts on this Park. It was initially held by Park Administrators that native Tibetan people had occupied villages in this park for less than 350 years. After our first visit, the new date was at least 700 years; after the second visit, the date was at least 2200 years; and most recently, the date is near 3000. More significant was the discovery of pottery shards that put the earliest inhabitants into the Han versus Tibetan group - no other high, western mountain Han villages have been discovered before our discovery.