Large scale anthropogenic reduction of forest cover in last glacial maximum Europe

  • Reconstructions of the vegetation of Europe during the Last Glacial Maximum (LGM) are an enigma. Pollen-based analyses have suggested that Europe was largely covered by steppe and tundra, and forests persisted only in small refugia. Climate-vegetation model simulations on the other hand have consistently suggested that broad areas of Europe would have been suitable for forest, even in the depths of the last glaciation. Here we reconcile models with data by demonstrating that the highly mobile groups of hunter-gatherers that inhabited Europe at the LGM could have substantially reduced forest cover through the ignition of wildfires. Similar to hunter-gatherers of the more recent past, Upper Paleolithic humans were masters of the use of fire, and preferred inhabiting semi-open landscapes to facilitate foraging, hunting and travel. Incorporating human agency into a dynamic vegetation-fire model and simulating forest cover shows that even small increases in wildfire frequency over natural background levels resulted in large changes in the forested area of Europe, in part because trees were already stressed by low atmospheric CO2 concentrations and the cold, dry, and highly variable climate. Our results suggest that the impact of humans on the glacial landscape of Europe may be one of the earliest large-scale anthropogenic modifications of the earth system.
Metadaten
Author:Jed O. Kaplan, Mirjam Pfeiffer, Jan Kolen, Basil S. Davis
URN:urn:nbn:de:hebis:30:3-419972
URL:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5130213
DOI:https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0166726
ISSN:1932-6203
Pubmed Id:https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/27902716
Parent Title (English):PLoS one
Publisher:PLoS
Place of publication:Lawrence, Kan.
Contributor(s):Robert F. Baldwin
Document Type:Article
Language:English
Date of Publication (online):2017/01/16
Date of first Publication:2016/11/30
Publishing Institution:Universitätsbibliothek Johann Christian Senckenberg
Release Date:2017/01/16
Volume:11
Issue:(11): e0166726
Page Number:17
First Page:1
Last Page:17
Note:
Copyright: © 2016 Kaplan et al. This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.
HeBIS-PPN:415172373
Institutes:Fachübergreifende Einrichtungen / Biodiversität und Klima Forschungszentrum (BiK-F)
Dewey Decimal Classification:5 Naturwissenschaften und Mathematik / 55 Geowissenschaften, Geologie / 550 Geowissenschaften
Sammlungen:Universitätspublikationen
Licence (German):License LogoCreative Commons - Namensnennung 4.0