Summary: The Past, Present, and Future of California Chaparral

Abstract

Chaparral ecosystems have covered expansive swaths of low- and mid-elevation California for millions of years. Like the world’s four other Mediterranean-type climate (MTC) regions, the California landscape is biologically diverse, with plentiful resources. Consequently, when human immigrants arrived from Asia in the late Pleistocene they found ample sustenance to support their needs and in turn, learned to manage these ecosystems and leave their own mark on the landscape (see Chaps. 1–3). By the time of the arrival of Europeans in California in the late eighteenth century, Native American populations near the coast were perhaps the largest of any indigenous peoples in North America. Native American management of chaparral habitats was extensive and locally intensive, and the variegated landscape that Spanish explorers and missionaries encountered near the coast and at lower elevations was largely the product of indigenous management, with fire being the central management tool (see Chap. 4).