![]() This work also suggests ecosystem rates of change will continue to accelerate over the coming decades, as modern climate change further adds to this long history of flux. Researchers collecting a core sample in St. The research, published May 20 in Science, suggests that humanity’s dominant influence on ecosystems that is so visible today has its origin in the earliest civilizations and the rise of agriculture, deforestation and other ways our species has influenced the landscape. Today, this pace rivals or exceeds the rapid turnover that took place as plants raced to colonize formerly frozen landscapes and adapt to a global climate that warmed by about 10 degrees Fahrenheit. MADISON – A global survey of fossil pollen has discovered that the planet’s vegetation is changing at least as quickly today as it did when the last ice sheets retreated around 10,000 years ago.īeginning some 3,000-to-4,000 years ago, Earth’s plant communities began changing at an accelerating pace. Finally, the rate of vegetation change is estimated from the changes in pollen abundances through time. By identifying and counting the different pollen grains researchers can then reconstruct the local vegetation composition. To study past plant ecosystems and how they changed, a lake or other suitable environment is cored to retrieve the layered sediments which usually contain pollen grains that accumulated over thousands of years. ![]()
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