title: Biodiversity and Archeological Conservation Connected: Aragonite Shell Middens Increase Plant Diversity.
abstract: Natural and cultural heritage sites frequently have nonoverlapping or even conflicting conservation priorities, because human impacts have often resulted in local extirpations and reduced levels of native biodiversity. Over thousands of years, the predictable winter rains of northwestern Baja California have weathered calcium from the clam shells deposited by indigenous peoples in middens along the coast. The release of this calcium has changed soil properties, remediated sodic and saline soils, and resulted in a unique microhabitat that harbors plant assemblages very different from those of the surrounding matrix. Native plant biodiversity and landscape heterogeneity are significantly increased on the anthropogenic soils of these shell middens. Protection of this cultural landscape in the Anthropocene will further both archeological and biodiversity conservation in these anthropogenic footprints from the Holocene. Along these coasts, natural and cultural heritage priorities are overlapping and mutually beneficial.
authors.affiliation: Sula E. Vanderplank is affiliated with the Botanical Research Institute of Texas, in Fort Worth. Sergio Mata is affiliated with the Society of Native Plants of Baja California, in Ensenada, Baja California, Mexico. Exequiel Ezcurra is affiliated with the Department of Plant Sciences at the University of California, Riverside sula.vanderplank@gmail.com .
authors.forename: Sula E
authors.initials: SE
authors.lastname: Vanderplank
authors.affiliation: Sula E. Vanderplank is affiliated with the Botanical Research Institute of Texas, in Fort Worth. Sergio Mata is affiliated with the Society of Native Plants of Baja California, in Ensenada, Baja California, Mexico. Exequiel Ezcurra is affiliated with the Department of Plant Sciences at the University of California, Riverside sula.vanderplank@gmail.com .
authors.forename: Sergio
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Mata
authors.affiliation: Sula E. Vanderplank is affiliated with the Botanical Research Institute of Texas, in Fort Worth. Sergio Mata is affiliated with the Society of Native Plants of Baja California, in Ensenada, Baja California, Mexico. Exequiel Ezcurra is affiliated with the Department of Plant Sciences at the University of California, Riverside sula.vanderplank@gmail.com .
authors.forename: Exequiel
authors.initials: E
authors.lastname: Ezcurra
keywords: Baja California; Mexico; Tivela; coastal; cultural landscape