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Living with Biodiversity in an Island Ecosystem pp 15–30Cite as

Ecological History and Regional Context of Roviana

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Part of the book series: Ethnobiology ((EBL))

Abstract

This chapter summarizes the geographical, ecological, social, and cultural background of the study site of the Solomon Islands. The high level of biodiversity found to persist there was perceived to have resulted from a lack of human intervention, but archaeological and forest ecological studies have indicated that many of the very old forests that make up the ecosystem in this area had once been cleared by ancestral people. Furthermore, the geological and vegetative characteristics of each island vary widely; this is especially true of the large volcanic island and small barrier islands, even within the limited geographical scale. People depend on root crops as their main source of food. Subsistence gardens, abandoned second-growth forests, and coconut plantations have rendered the landscape a mosaic of various land cover types. All Roviana people share the same culture and similar ecological settings, although the degree of modernization varies among them. Therefore, this area provided an ideal setting for this study’s framework.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Ecology and Environment, Division of Southeast Asian Area Studies, Graduate School of Asian and African Area Studies, Kyoto University, Kyoto, Japan

    Takuro Furusawa

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  1. Takuro Furusawa
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Furusawa, T. (2016). Ecological History and Regional Context of Roviana. In: Living with Biodiversity in an Island Ecosystem. Ethnobiology. Springer, Singapore. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-287-904-2_2

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