Pearce, Elena A; Mazier, Florence; Normand, Signe; Fyfe, Ralph; Andrieu, Valérie; Bakels, Corrie; Balwierz, Zofia; Bińka, Krzysztof; Boreham, Steve; Borisova, Olga K; Brostrom, Anna; de Beaulieu, Jacques-Louis; Gao, Cunhai; González-Sampériz, Penélope; Granoszewski, Wojciech; Hrynowiecka, Anna; Kołaczek, Piotr; Kuneš, Petr; Magri, Donatella; Malkiewicz, Małgorzata; ... (2023). Substantial light woodland and open vegetation characterized the temperate forest biome before Homo sapiens. Science advances, 9(45), eadi9135. American Association for the Advancement of Science 10.1126/sciadv.adi9135
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The extent of vegetation openness in past European landscapes is widely debated. In particular, the temperate forest biome has traditionally been defined as dense, closed-canopy forest; however, some argue that large herbivores maintained greater openness or even wood-pasture conditions. Here, we address this question for the Last Interglacial period (129,000-116,000 years ago), before Homo sapiens-linked megafauna declines and anthropogenic landscape transformation. We applied the vegetation reconstruction method REVEALS to 96 Last Interglacial pollen records. We found that light woodland and open vegetation represented, on average, more than 50% cover during this period. The degree of openness was highly variable and only partially linked to climatic factors, indicating the importance of natural disturbance regimes. Our results show that the temperate forest biome was historically heterogeneous rather than uniformly dense, which is consistent with the dependency of much of contemporary European biodiversity on open vegetation and light woodland.
Item Type: |
Journal Article (Original Article) |
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Division/Institute: |
10 Strategic Research Centers > Oeschger Centre for Climate Change Research (OCCR) 08 Faculty of Science > Department of Biology > Institute of Plant Sciences (IPS) > Palaeoecology 08 Faculty of Science > Department of Biology > Institute of Plant Sciences (IPS) |
UniBE Contributor: |
Schläfli, Patrick Fabian |
Subjects: |
500 Science > 580 Plants (Botany) |
ISSN: |
2375-2548 |
Publisher: |
American Association for the Advancement of Science |
Language: |
English |
Submitter: |
Pubmed Import |
Date Deposited: |
14 Nov 2023 10:32 |
Last Modified: |
26 Nov 2024 03:32 |
Publisher DOI: |
10.1126/sciadv.adi9135 |
PubMed ID: |
37948521 |
BORIS DOI: |
10.48350/188788 |
URI: |
https://boris.unibe.ch/id/eprint/188788 |
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