Using paleo-archives to safeguard biodiversity under climate change

Fordham, Damien A.; Jackson, Stephen T.; Brown, Stuart C.; Huntley, Brian; Brook, Barry W.; Dahl-Jensen, Dorthe; Gilbert, M. Thomas P.; Otto‐Bliesner, Bette L.; Svensson, Anders; Theodoridis, Spyros; Wilmshurst, Janet M.; Buettel, Jessie C.; Canteri, Elisabetta; McDowell, Matthew C.; Orlando, Ludovic; Pilowsky, Julia; Rahbek, Carsten; Nogués‐Bravo, David

doi:10.1126/science.abc5654

Cited by 124 publications

(143 citation statements)

References 110 publications

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“…Long-term multi-millennial scale environmental datasets have been underutilised in research aiming to understand recent biodiversity trends (Willis & Birks, 2006;Willis et al, 2005). Such datasets hold great potential to inform restoration ecology (Fordham et al, 2020;Higgs et al, 2014;Hobbs et al, 2014) through revealing ecological legacies and the influence of past human activities on current biodiversity patterns, which can be problematic to measure in relation to achieving conservation targets (Watts et al, 2020).…”

Section: Current Biodiversity Patterns and Potential Of Long-term Ementioning

confidence: 99%

What drives biodiversity patterns? Using long‐term multidisciplinary data to discern centennial‐scale change

et al. 2020

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1. Biodiversity plays an important role in ecosystem functioning, habitat recovery following disturbance and resilience to global environmental change. Long-term ecological records can be used to explore biodiversity patterns and trends over centennial to multi-millennial timescales across broad regions. Fossil pollen grains preserved in sediment over millennia reflect palynological richness and diversity, which relates to changes in landscape diversity. Other long-term environmental data, such as fossil insects, palaeoclimate and archaeologically inferred palaeodemographic (population) data, hold potential to address questions about the drivers and consequences of diversity change when combined with fossil pollen records. 2. This study tests a model of Holocene palynological diversity change through a synthesis of pollen and insect records from across the British Isles along with palaeodemographic trends and palaeoclimate records. We demonstrate relationships between human population change, insect faunal group turnover, palynological diversity and climate trends through the Holocene. 3. Notable increases in population at the start of the British Neolithic (~6,000 calendar years before present [bp]) and Bronze Age (~4,200 bp) coincided with the loss of forests, increased agricultural activity and changes in insect faunal groups to species associated with human land use. Pollen diversity and evenness increased, most notably since the Bronze Age, as landscapes became more open and heterogeneous. However, regionally distinctive patterns are also evident within the context of these broad-scale trends. Palynological diversity is correlated with population while diversity and population are correlated with some climate datasets during certain time periods (e.g. Greenland temperature in the mid-late Holocene). 4. Synthesis. This study has demonstrated that early human societies contributed to shaping palynological diversity patterns over millennia within the context of broader climatic influences upon vegetation. The connections between population and palynological diversity become increasingly significant in the later Holocene, implying intensifying impacts of human activity, which may override climatic effects. Patterns | 1397

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Section: Current Biodiversity Patterns and Potential Of Long-term Ementioning

confidence: 99%

What drives biodiversity patterns? Using long‐term multidisciplinary data to discern centennial‐scale change

et al. 2020

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“…What has remained fiercely contested is the relative role of human hunting and climate change, or a synergy of these impacts, on the fate of the megafauna (2,3,(8)(9)(10)(11)(12). Major barriers to a resolution include a sparse and uncertain fossil record (13), a lack of high-resolution spatiotemporal projections of climatic change and human abundances (14), and a reliance on correlative rather than process-based approaches to infer drivers of extinction (15).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Recent developments in macroecological modelling are enabling the drivers and processes of megafauna extinctions to be unraveled using a wide body of evidence from paleo-archives (15).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Process-explicit models reveal pathway to extinction for woolly mammoth using pattern-oriented validation

Fordham

Brown

Akçakaya

et al. 2021

Preprint

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Processes leading to the megafauna extinctions of the late Pleistocene and early-Holocene are uncertain, with intense debate on the roles of human hunting and climatic change. Using process-explicit simulations of climate-human-woolly mammoth interactions, which integrate spatiotemporal evidence from fossils and ancient DNA, we show that humans accelerated the timing of range collapse, extirpation and eventual extinction of woolly mammoth in Eurasia. Population growth and northward migrations of people during the late Pleistocene led to the premature extirpation of populations of woolly mammoth in areas of Eurasia that were climatically suitable into the Holocene, hastening climate-driven declines by up to 4,000 years in some regions. Our simulations also pinpoint mainland Arctic refugia where mammoths likely persisted until the mid-Holocene, some 5,000 years longer than previously thought. Our results reveal that the role of humans in the extinction dynamics of woolly mammoth was long and chronic, and not limited to a Holocene over-kill.

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“…Most evident is the discrepancy whereby the temporal decline in biodiversity at the global and regional scales does not match that of local scale where, on average, there is less or even no decline (Vellend et al , 2013; Dornelas et al , 2014; Blowes et al , 2019). In addition, short-term studies may not detect the underlying long-term trends, and there is a need for longer time series at the regional and local scales (Gonzalez et al , 2016; Nogués-Bravo et al , 2018; Fordham et al , 2020). Palaeobotanical proxies such as pollen (Giesecke et al , 2012) and plant macrofossils (Birks & Birks, 2000) provide direct long-term evidence of plant biodiversity change.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Sedimentary ancient DNA shows terrestrial plant richness continuously increased over the Holocene in northern Fennoscandia

Rijal

Heintzman

Lammers

et al. 2020

Preprint

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SummaryIt is crucial to understand how climate warming and other environmental factors affect biodiversity, especially in the rapidly changing northern latitudes.We use sedimentary ancient DNA (sedaDNA) metabarcoding to estimate taxonomic richness, and local and regional species pools of terrestrial plants for 10 lakes in northern Fennoscandia over the Holocene.In total, 288 taxa were found in the 316 samples analysed, with local species pools of 89-200 and mean taxonomic richness of 21-65 per catchment. Quality control showed that sedaDNA is a reliable estimate of richness. Local and regional species pools showed a steep increase in the Early Holocene, when the highest rate of warming took place, and continued to increase through the Middle and into the Late Holocene, although temperature decreased over these periods. Only the regional species pool levels off during the last two millennia. Richness and local species pools were always higher in catchments with higher bedrock nutrient availability.We find sedaDNA to be a good proxy for diversity, opening avenues to detect patterns hereto unknown, and we provide a robust methodological approach to its application. Our findings suggest we can expect time lags and environmental factors to affect species richness also of the following global warming.

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Using paleo-archives to safeguard biodiversity under climate change

Cited by 124 publications

References 110 publications

What drives biodiversity patterns? Using long‐term multidisciplinary data to discern centennial‐scale change

What drives biodiversity patterns? Using long‐term multidisciplinary data to discern centennial‐scale change

Process-explicit models reveal pathway to extinction for woolly mammoth using pattern-oriented validation

Sedimentary ancient DNA shows terrestrial plant richness continuously increased over the Holocene in northern Fennoscandia

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