Reduced resilience of plant biomes in North America could be setting the stage for the kind of mass extinctions not seen since the retreat of glaciers and arrival of humans about 13,000 years ago, cautions a new study published August 20 in the journal Global Change Biology.
The warning comes from a study of 14,189 fossil pollen samples taken from 358 locations across the continent. Researchers at the Georgia Institute of Technology used data from the samples to determine landscape resilience, including how long specific landscapes such as forests and grasslands existed – a factor known as residence time — and how well they rebounded following perturbations such as forest fires — a factor termed recovery.
“Our work indicates that landscapes today are once again exhibiting low resilience, foreboding potential extinctions to come,” wrote authors Yue Wang, Benjamin Shipley, Daniel Lauer, Roseann Pineau, and Jenny McGuire. “Conservation strategies focused on improving both landscape and ecosystem resilience by increasing local connectivity and targeting regions with high richness and diverse landforms can mitigate these extinction risks.”
Continue reading at Georgia Tech.
Image via Allison Carter.