Identifying Global‐Scale Patterns of Vegetation Change During the Last Deglaciation from Paleoclimate Networks

Global vegetation over the past 18,000 years has been transformed first by the climate changes that accompanied the last deglaciation and again by increasing human pressures; however, the magnitude and patterns of rates of vegetation change are poorly understood globally. Using a compilation of 1181 fossil pollen sequences and newly developed statistical methods, we detect a worldwide acceleration in the rates of vegetation compositional change beginning between 4.6 and 2.9 thousand years ago that is globally unprecedented over the past 18,000 years in both magnitude and extent. Late Holocene rates of change equal or exceed the deglacial rates for all continents, which suggests that the scale of human effects on terrestrial ecosystems exceeds even the climate-driven transformations of the last deglaciation. The acceleration of biodiversity change demonstrated in ecological datasets from the past century began millennia ago.

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Climate and abrupt vegetation change in Northern Europe since the last deglaciation

The Holocene ◽

10.1177/0959683614556383 ◽

2014 ◽

Vol 25 (1) ◽

pp. 25-36 ◽

Cited By ~ 25

Author(s):

Alistair WR Seddon ◽

Marc Macias-Fauria ◽

Kathy J Willis

Keyword(s):

Vegetation Change ◽

Northern Europe ◽

Last Deglaciation ◽

The Last Deglaciation

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Vegetation change and human-environment interactions in the Qinghai Lake Basin, northeastern Tibetan Plateau, since the last deglaciation

CATENA ◽

10.1016/j.catena.2021.105892 ◽

2022 ◽

Vol 210 ◽

pp. 105892

Author(s):

Naimeng Zhang ◽

Xianyong Cao ◽

Qinghai Xu ◽

Xiaozhong Huang ◽

Ulrike Herzschuh ◽

...

Keyword(s):

Tibetan Plateau ◽

Vegetation Change ◽

Qinghai Lake ◽

Lake Basin ◽

Last Deglaciation ◽

Human Environment ◽

Northeastern Tibetan Plateau ◽

The Last Deglaciation ◽

Qinghai Lake Basin

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Luminescence-dated aeolian deposits of late Quaternary age in the southern Tibetan Plateau and their implications for landscape history

Quaternary Research ◽

10.1016/j.yqres.2009.07.005 ◽

2009 ◽

Vol 72 (3) ◽

pp. 421-430 ◽

Cited By ~ 57

Author(s):

ZhongPing Lai ◽

Knut Kaiser ◽

Helmut Brückner

Keyword(s):

Tibetan Plateau ◽

Late Quaternary ◽

Age Distribution ◽

Sediment Accumulation ◽

Global Scale ◽

The Tibetan Plateau ◽

Last Deglaciation ◽

Aeolian Deposits ◽

The Last Deglaciation ◽

Environmental Responses

AbstractAeolian deposits are widely distributed in the interior of the Tibetan Plateau, and their chronology is poorly known. It is not yet clear whether they accumulated only after the last deglaciation, or over a longer time. We applied quartz OSL dating to aeolian samples from the Lhasa area with OSL ages ranging from 2.9 ± 0.2 to at least 118 ± 11 ka. The probability density frequency (PDF) distribution of 24 ages reveals age clusters at about 3, 8, 16–21, 33, and 79–83 ka, indicating enhanced sediment accumulation then. The results show that aeolian deposition occurred throughout most of the last 100 ka. This implies that: 1) an ice sheet covering the whole Tibetan Plateau during the last glacial maximum (LGM) could not have existed; and 2) erosion during the last deglaciation was not as strong as previously proposed, such that not all pre-Holocene loess was removed. The age distribution shown in the PDF indicates that aeolian accumulation is episodic. Sand-formation events revealed by age clusters at 3, 8, and 16–21 ka imply roughly synchronous environmental responses to corresponding global-scale arid events.

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