Human activities over the past 200 years have fundamentally transformed the shape of Australia’s southern Murray–Darling Basin. The arrival of British colonists in the 19th century disrupted millennia of human management of the region and brought widespread changes to biota and soils. The subsequent development of mining, transport and irrigation infrastructure re-engineered the region’s landscapes to meet human objectives and ambitions. This article offers an integrated regional history of anthropogenic change across the southern Murray–Darling Basin, identifying historical processes driving complex ongoing interactions between human activities and the natural environment. We examine three broad domains of engineering and geo-disturbance in the region, including the development of transport corridors, micro- and macro-scale water management and landforms remade by erosion and sedimentation. We use the archaeology of the recent past to integrate insights drawn from physical geography, fluvial geomorphology and related research into the enduring landscape changes of modern Australia’s food bowl.

中文翻译：

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南部默里-达令盆地的工程景观：澳大利亚的人类世考古

在过去200年中，人类活动从根本上改变了澳大利亚南部墨累达令盆地的形态。19世纪英国殖民者的到来打乱了该地区人类的千年管理，并使生物区系和土壤发生了广泛变化。采矿，运输和灌溉基础设施的后续发展重新设计了该地区的景观，以满足人类的目标和抱负。本文提供了整个默里-达令盆地南部人为变化的综合区域历史，确定了推动人类活动与自然环境之间复杂的，持续的相互作用的历史过程。我们研究了该地区工程和地理干扰的三个广泛领域，包括运输走廊的开发，微观和宏观尺度的水管理和因侵蚀和沉积而重建的地貌。我们使用最近的考古学，将自然地理学，河流地貌学和相关研究的见解整合到现代澳大利亚菜碗的持久景观变化中。