The resilience of North America’s plant biomes is declining — indicating that today’s landscapes are “primed to herald a major extinction event” not seen since the retreat of glaciers and arrival of humans 13,000 years ago, scientists reported in a new study published in the journal Global Change Biology.
The resilience of North America’s plant biomes is declining — indicating that today’s landscapes are “primed to herald a major extinction event” not seen since the retreat of glaciers and arrival of humans 13,000 years ago, scientists reported in a new study published in the journal Global Change Biology.
The research analyzed 14,189 fossil pollen samples from 358 sites across North America, allowing scientists to reconstruct the “landscape resilience” — defined as “the ability of habitats to persist or quickly rebound in response to disturbances” — of 12 major plant biomes over the past 20,000 years.
The retreat of North American glaciers at the end of the Pleistocene era, for example, destabilized ecosystems, causing widespread shifts in plant composition and large herbivores such as mammoths to struggle for food supplies. Combined with the arrival of humans, the events were “a one-two punch that resulted in the extinction of large terrestrial mammals on the continent,” Jenny McGuire, a climate scientist at the Georgia Institute of Technology and a coauthor of the study, said in a statement.
Read more at Yale Environment 360
Image: A landscape of mountain prairie, pine forest, and aspen groves in Coconino National Forest near Flagstaff, Arizona. DEBORAH LEE SOLTESZ / U.S. FOREST SERVICE
