Ecological Succession and Mormon Colonization in the Little Colorado River Basin
Binghamton, NY
State University of New York at Binghamton
1981
Ph.D. diss.
"This dissertation applies an explicit ecological model to explain variations in community development among pioneer Mormon settlements in the arid Little Colorado River Basin of northeastern Arizona during the last quarter of the nineteenth century. The model employed here is an adaptation of the succession model developd by plant and animal ecologists to account for the evolution of complex ecological communities. The application of this model to the Little Colorado settlements rests upon the assumption that human communities are ecological communities through which populations and resources are mutually regulated. The succession model deals explicitly with the relationship between population growth, community productivity and functional community diversity, and systematically connects changes in these three community parameters with variations in resource variability. The examination of Mormon colonization begins with a discussion of the succession model and its implications for human communities. After operationalizing the components of this model to the communities under investigation and presenting a general overview of settlement history in the basin, attention focuses upon those features of the settlement process that bear directly upon conditions specified within the succession model. Since the expansion of the American frontier compounded the developmental problems encountered by early Mormon pioneers in their struggle with the natural features of the Little Colorado River Basin, the present analysis accounts for the developmental impact of both natural and socio-cultural conditions within an integrated ecological framework. Individual and sub-regional variations in community development, the differential success of Mormon efforts to establish an encompassing regional community in the basin, and the impact of external factors upon the settlement process are all evaluated explicitly in terms of specific predictions of the succession model. In each case, empirical developments are consistently explained by this model. The successful application of the succession model to explain differential community development in the Little Colorado River Basin suggests broader theoretical and methodolgical implications. By illustrating the importance of environmental factors {natural and socio-cultural} in community development in the basin and by indicating the adaptive role performed by Mormon institutions in assuring sufficient and reliable resource flows throughout the region, the analysis clearly demonstrates the primacy of material factors in community evolution in this case. This research thus lends clear support to those evolutionary models which stress the developmental implications of population-resource interactions. Those specific material conditions that affected the size and stability of population and productivity proved to be the critical factors determining community evolution. The successful application of the succession model to Mormon colonization in the basin also contributes to the realization of a unified science of ecology in which general ecological concepts and methods are applied explicitly to the analysis of human populations. This research suggests that human communities comprise variants of ecological communities and that the organization and evolution of all ecological communities, regardless of their specific biological composition, can be explained from identical theoretical principles." [Author's abstract]