| Reconstruction of spatially explicit, temporally extended land use history is critical for understanding legacies imparted by land use prior to the 20th century. In this study, the property mosaic originally claimed from 1664 to 1791 is reconstructed for the Gwynns Falls watershed, the site of the Baltimore Ecosystem Study, a Long-Term Ecological Research site. This land use history was central to many regional ecosystem changes. For example, in this study, overbank sedimentation rates are reconstructed and compared to historic land use in a tributary to the Gwynns Falls.; This research develops a method for reconstruction of original property mosaics from warrant and patent systems, which are characterized by crude record keeping and irregular property boundaries. The original property mosaic is compared with contemporary data sets to identify persistent original land division patterns. The results suggest settlement decisions were made in response to landscape physiochemical gradients. The original property mosaic imparts pattern to the current landscape including over 50 km of edge. Large lot property patterns first delayed and then accelerated the expansion of urban areas. Landscape features inherit size and shape characteristics from initial land division. For example, parks share up to 25% of their boundaries with original property lines.; In addition, a method is developed that uses regional chromite mining waste as a stratigraphic marker in sediments mobilized during land use transitions. Sediments deposited in floodplains during these early periods are undateable with conventional dating techniques. In riparian areas, chromium chemostratigraphy concentration peaks are tied to historic mining activity. Chromium stratigraphies are used to date riparian sediments deposited before peak regional forest clearance. For example, early sedimentation rates (1828–1880) reconstructed using Cr stratigraphy are up to four times higher than rates during peak agricultural clearance (∼1900).; The findings of this research demonstrate that reconstruction of temporally extended, spatially explicit land use history is an important addition to continuing investigations of ecological legacies, expanding temporal and spatial scales. |
