The Landscape Legacies of Sugar and Rum

Abstract

The environmental legacies of sugarcane cultivation at Betty’s Hope were created over a period of three hundred years and involved massive transformations to the landscape. In this chapter, erosion/productivity simulation is used to generate a baseline model of change over time and then historical records and geoarchaeological analysis of soils are used to evaluate the model. It is concluded that contemporary soil degradation at Betty’s Hope is a mosaic of effects including long-term sugarcane monocropping as well as the recent cessation of agriculture, which caused rapid destabilization of already vulnerable landscapes. Using an historical ecology framework, this research demonstrates the importance of long-term perspectives for understanding soil health.