Uncoupling human and climate drivers of late Holocene vegetation change in southern Brazil

Scientific Reports
Mark RobinsonJosé Iriarte

Abstract

In the highlands of southern Brazil an anthropogenitcally driven expansion of forest occurred at the expense of grasslands between 1410 and 900 cal BP, coincident with a period of demographic and cultural change in the region. Previous studies have debated the relative contributions of increasing wetter and warmer climate conditions and human landscape modifications to forest expansion, but generally lacked high resoltiuon proxies to measure these effects, or have relied on single proxies to reconstruct both climate and vegetation. Here, we develop and test a model of natural ecosystem distribution against vegetation histories, paleoclimate proxies, and the archaeological record to distinguish human from temperature and precipitation impacts on the distribution and expansion of Araucaria forests during the late Holocene. Carbon isotopes from soil profiles confirm that in spite of climatic fluctuations, vegetation was stable and forests were spatially limited to south-facing slopes in the absence of human inputs. In contrast, forest management strategies for the past 1400 years expanded this economically important forest beyond its natural geographic boundaries in areas of dense pre-Columbian occupation, suggesting that landscap...Continue Reading

References

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Jan 27, 2007·Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B, Biological Sciences·Francis E MaylePatrick Meir
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Aug 31, 2016·Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America·Sean S DowneyStephen J Shennan

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Citations

Jul 14, 2019·Global Change Biology·Oliver J WilsonAlexander C Vibrans
Jul 24, 2020·PloS One·Aline Pereira CruzNivaldo Peroni
Jun 12, 2021·Science·Bernardo M Flores, Carolina Levis
Jun 12, 2021·Nature Ecology & Evolution·Rebecca HamiltonPatrick Roberts

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