Spatially synchronous population dynamics: An indicator of Pleistocene faunal response to large-scale environmental change in the Holocene

In this study, we explore the long-term trends of floodplain population dynamics at different spatial scales in the contiguous United States (U.S.). We exploit different types of datasets from 1790–2010—i.e., decadal spatial distribution for the population density in the US, global floodplains dataset, large-scale data of flood occurrence and damage, and structural and nonstructural flood protection measures for the US. At the national level, we found that the population initially settled down within the floodplains and then spread across its territory over time. At the state level, we observed that flood damages and national protection measures might have contributed to a learning effect, which in turn, shaped the floodplain population dynamics over time. Finally, at the county level, other socio-economic factors such as local flood insurances, economic activities, and socio-political context may predominantly influence the dynamics. Our study shows that different influencing factors affect floodplain population dynamics at different spatial scales. These facts are crucial for a reliable development and implementation of flood risk management planning.

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Fencing affects African wild dog movement patterns and population dynamics

Oryx ◽

10.1017/s0030605320000320 ◽

2021 ◽

pp. 1-9

Author(s):

Helen M. K. O'Neill ◽

Sarah M. Durant ◽

Stefanie Strebel ◽

Rosie Woodroffe

Keyword(s):

Population Dynamics ◽

Large Scale ◽

Animal Movement ◽

Landscape Connectivity ◽

Ecological Impact ◽

Movement Patterns ◽

Wrong Side ◽

African Wild Dog ◽

Wild Dog ◽

Wild Dogs

Abstract Wildlife fences are often considered an important tool in conservation. Fences are used in attempts to prevent human–wildlife conflict and reduce poaching, despite known negative impacts on landscape connectivity and animal movement patterns. Such impacts are likely to be particularly important for wide-ranging species, such as the African wild dog Lycaon pictus, which requires large areas of continuous habitat to fulfil its resource requirements. Laikipia County in northern Kenya is an important area for wild dogs but new wildlife fences are increasingly being built in this ecosystem. Using a long-term dataset from the area's free-ranging wild dog population, we evaluated the effect of wildlife fence structure on the ability of wild dogs to cross them. The extent to which fences impeded wild dog movement differed between fence designs, although individuals crossed fences of all types. Purpose-built fence gaps increased passage through relatively impermeable fences. Nevertheless, low fence permeability can lead to packs, or parts of packs, becoming trapped on the wrong side of a fence, with consequences for population dynamics. Careful evaluation should be given to the necessity of erecting fences; ecological impact assessments should incorporate evaluation of impacts on animal movement patterns and should be undertaken for all large-scale fencing interventions. Where fencing is unavoidable, projects should use the most permeable fencing structures possible, both in the design of the fence and including as many purpose-built gaps as possible, to minimize impacts on wide-ranging wildlife.

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Sustainable harvest or resource depression? Using ancient DNA to study the population dynamics of guanaco in western Argentina during the Holocene

Journal of Archaeological Science ◽

10.1016/j.jas.2021.105355 ◽

2021 ◽

Vol 129 ◽

pp. 105355

Author(s):

Cinthia Carolina Abbona ◽

Gustavo Neme ◽

Jeff Johnson ◽

Adolfo Gil ◽

Ricardo Villalba ◽

...

Keyword(s):

Population Dynamics ◽

Ancient Dna ◽

Sustainable Harvest ◽

Resource Depression ◽

The Holocene

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A Multi-proxy assessment of the impact of climate change on Late Holocene (ca 4500-3800 BP) Native American villages of the Georgia coast

10.1101/2021.10.11.463980 ◽

2021 ◽

Author(s):

Carey James Garland ◽

Victor D Thompson ◽

Matthew C Sanger ◽

Karen Y Smith ◽

Fred T Andrus ◽

...

Keyword(s):

Native American ◽

Environmental Change ◽

Large Scale ◽

Atlantic Coast ◽

Archaic Period ◽

Late Archaic ◽

Shell Ring ◽

Shell Rings ◽

Georgia Coast ◽

The Impact

Circular shell rings along the Atlantic Coast of southeastern North America are the remnants of some of the earliest villages that emerged during the Late Archaic Period (5000 – 3000 BP). Many of these villages, however, were abandoned during the Terminal Late Archaic Period (ca 3800 – 3000 BP). Here, we combine Bayesian chronological modeling with multiple environmental proxies to understand the nature and timing of environmental change associated with the emergence and abandonment of shell ring villages on Sapleo Island, Georgia. Our Bayesian models indicate that Native Americans occupied the three Sapelo shell rings at varying times with some generational overlap. By the end of the complex’s occupation, only Ring III was occupied before abandonment ca. 3845 BP. Ring III also consists of statistically smaller oysters ( Crassostrea virginica ) that people harvested from less saline estuaries compared to earlier occupations. These data, when integrated with recent tree ring analyses, show a clear pattern of environmental instability throughout the period in which the rings were occupied. We argue that as the climate became unstable around 4300 BP, aggregation at shell ring villages provided a way to effectively manage fisheries that are highly sensitive to environmental change. However, with the eventual collapse of oyster fisheries and subsequent rebound in environmental conditions ca. 3800 BP, people dispersed from shell rings, and shifted to non-marine subsistence economies and other types of settlements. This study provides the most comprehensive evidence correlations between large-scale environmental change and societal transformations on the Georgia coast during the Late Archaic period.

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A simple conceptual model to interpret the 100 000 years dynamics of paleo-climate records

Nonlinear Processes in Geophysics ◽

10.5194/npg-17-585-2010 ◽

2010 ◽

Vol 17 (5) ◽

pp. 585-592 ◽

Cited By ~ 2

Author(s):

C. S. Quiroga Lombard ◽

P. Balenzuela ◽

H. Braun ◽

D. R. Chialvo

Keyword(s):

Large Scale ◽

Power Spectra ◽

Greenland Ice Sheet ◽

Ice Age ◽

Solar Cycles ◽

The Holocene ◽

De Vries ◽

Last Ice Age ◽

Paleoclimate Records ◽

Dominant Frequencies

Abstract. Spectral analyses performed on records of cosmogenic nuclides reveal a group of dominant spectral components during the Holocene period. Only a few of them are related to known solar cycles, i.e., the De Vries/Suess, Gleissberg and Hallstatt cycles. The origin of the others remains uncertain. On the other hand, time series of North Atlantic atmospheric/sea surface temperatures during the last ice age display the existence of repeated large-scale warming events, called Dansgaard-Oeschger (DO) events, spaced around multiples of 1470 years. The De Vries/Suess and Gleissberg cycles with periods close to 1470/7 (~210) and 1470/17 (~86.5) years have been proposed to explain these observations. In this work we found that a conceptual bistable model forced with the De Vries/Suess and Gleissberg cycles plus noise displays a group of dominant frequencies similar to those obtained in the Fourier spectra from paleo-climate during the Holocene. Moreover, we show that simply changing the noise amplitude in the model we obtain similar power spectra to those corresponding to GISP2 δ18O (Greenland Ice Sheet Project 2) during the last ice age. These results give a general dynamical framework which allows us to interpret the main characteristic of paleoclimate records from the last 100 000 years.

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Assessing the large-scale impacts of environmental change using a coupled hydrology and soil erosion model

Earth Surface Dynamics ◽

10.5194/esurf-6-687-2018 ◽

2018 ◽

Vol 6 (3) ◽

pp. 687-703 ◽

Cited By ~ 6

Author(s):

Joris P. C. Eekhout ◽

Wilco Terink ◽

Joris de Vente

Keyword(s):

Soil Erosion ◽

Environmental Change ◽

Sediment Yield ◽

Large Scale ◽

Catchment Scale ◽

Time Step ◽

Vegetation Development ◽

Erosion Model ◽

Complete Representation ◽

Large Catchment

Abstract. Assessing the impacts of environmental change on soil erosion and sediment yield at the large catchment scale remains one of the main challenges in soil erosion modelling studies. Here, we present a process-based soil erosion model, based on the integration of the Morgan–Morgan–Finney erosion model in a daily based hydrological model. The model overcomes many of the limitations of previous large-scale soil erosion models, as it includes a more complete representation of crucial processes like surface runoff generation, dynamic vegetation development, and sediment deposition, and runs at the catchment scale with a daily time step. This makes the model especially suited for the evaluation of the impacts of environmental change on soil erosion and sediment yield at regional scales and over decadal periods. The model was successfully applied in a large catchment in southeastern Spain. We demonstrate the model's capacity to perform impact assessments of environmental change scenarios, specifically simulating the scenario impacts of intra- and inter-annual variations in climate, land management, and vegetation development on soil erosion and sediment yield.

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Bark Beetle Population Dynamics in the Anthropocene: Challenges and Solutions

10.20944/preprints201810.0640.v1 ◽

2018 ◽

Author(s):

Peter H. W. Biedermann ◽

Jean-Claude Grégoire ◽

Axel Gruppe ◽

Jonas Hagge ◽

Almuth Hammerbacher ◽

...

Keyword(s):

Population Dynamics ◽

Bark Beetle ◽

Collaborative Research ◽

Bark Beetles ◽

Large Scale ◽

Ips Typographus ◽

Ecological Framework ◽

Beetle Population ◽

Spruce Bark ◽

Important Pest

Tree-killing bark beetles are the most economically important insects in conifer forests worldwide. Yet  despite >200 years of research, the drivers of population eruptions or crashes are still not fully understood, precluding reliable predictions of the effects of global change on beetle population dynamics and impacts on ecosystems and humans.  We critically analyze potential biotic and abiotic drivers of population dynamics of the European spruce bark beetle (Ips typographus) and present a novel ecological framework that integrates the multiple drivers governing this bark beetle system. We call for large-scale collaborative research efforts to improve our understanding of the population dynamics of this important pest; an approach that might serve as a blueprint for other eruptive forest insects.

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An Agro-Based Society after Post-Industrial Society: From a Perspective of Economic Growth Paradigm

Social Sciences ◽

10.3390/socsci10120455 ◽

2021 ◽

Vol 10 (12) ◽

pp. 455

Author(s):

Hongyun Han ◽

Sheng Xia

Keyword(s):

Economic Growth ◽

Environmental Change ◽

Industrial Revolution ◽

Global Environmental Change ◽

Profit Maximization ◽

Industrial Society ◽

The Holocene ◽

Degraded Ecosystems ◽

Almost All ◽

Post Industrial

Since the Industrial Revolution, a new era has arisen called the Anthropocene, in which human actions have become the main driver of global environmental change outside the stable environmental state of the Holocene. During the Holocene, environmental change occurred naturally, and the Earth’s regulatory capacity maintained the conditions that enabled human development. Resource overexploitation of the industrial “Anthropocene”, under the principle of profit maximization, has led to planetary ecological crises, such as overloaded carbon sinks and climate changes, vanishing species, degraded ecosystems, and insufficient natural resources. Agro-based society, in which almost all demands of humans can be supported by agriculture, is characterized by life production. The substitution of Agro-based society for a post-industrial society is an evolutionary result of social movement, it is an internal requirement of a sustainable society for breaking through the resource constraint of economic growth. The core feature of agriculture is to use organisms as production objects and rely on life processes to achieve production goals. The substitution of Agro-based society for a post-industrial society is the precondition for a sustainable carbon cycle, breaking through the resource limits of the industrial “Anthropocene”, alleviating the environmental pressure of economic development, and promoting society from increasing disorderly entropy to orderly decreasing entropy. Meanwhile, technological advancements and growing environmental awareness of society make it feasible for the substitution of an agro-based society for a post-industrial society.

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