Environmental Change in the Aru Islands

Abstract

The Aru archipelago has attracted scientific interest over the past two centuries because of its position as a ‘lifeboat’ of the former Torresian plain of the continent of Sahul. Yet despite a lengthy visit by Wallace (1857, 1869; see Chapter 1, this volume), and subsequent studies of birds and other biota (e.g. van Balgooy and Nooteboom 1995; Monk et al. 1997; Flannery 1995), and geomorphology (Verstappen 1959), virtually no comprehensive environmental studies have been published with the exception of Nooteboom (1996). Although remoteness has been blamed for this state of affairs, the islands have experienced more than two centuries of reasonable communications and significant business activity based on pearling, bird of paradise feathers, and most recently timber extraction and commercial fishing. The islands have failed to attract comprehensive scientific work despite being known to western science, perhaps because New Guinea became accessible. For example, the large British Ornithological Union expedition called in at Dobo in 1910 as the last western outpost before tackling the New Guinean coast (Wollaston 1912), but made no studies on Aru. This chapter reviews what is known of the Aru natural environments, and provides a background to the archaeology by deducing the past environments and palaeoclimates from regional studies such as marine palynology (van der Kaars et al. 1997), reconstruction of past shorelines from bathymetry and isostatic modelling (e.g. Voris 2000; Yokoyama et al. 2001a), and limited local data. The major discovery by the present research team, of faunal change in the past that reflects climate change, is dealt with in detail in Chapters 7 and 9. These findings are summarized here and set in a regional context.

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