| 1. |
- Nogué, Sandra, et al.
(författare)
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The human dimension of biodiversity changes on islands
- 2021
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Ingår i: Science. - : American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS). - 0036-8075 .- 1095-9203. ; 372:6541, s. 488-491
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- Islands are among the last regions on Earth settled and transformed by human activities, and they provide replicated model systems for analysis of how people affect ecological functions. By analyzing 27 representative fossil pollen sequences encompassing the past 5000 years from islands globally, we quantified the rates of vegetation compositional change before and after human arrival. After human arrival, rates of turnover accelerate by a median factor of 11, with faster rates on islands colonized in the past 1500 years than for those colonized earlier. This global anthropogenic acceleration in turnover suggests that islands are on trajectories of continuing change. Strategies for biodiversity conservation and ecosystem restoration must acknowledge the long duration of human impacts and the degree to which ecological changes today differ from prehuman dynamics.
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| 2. |
- Battarbee, Richard W., et al.
(författare)
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John Birks: Pioneer in quantitative palaeoecology
- 2015
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Ingår i: The Holocene. - : SAGE Publications. - 0959-6836 .- 1477-0911. ; 25:1, s. 3-16
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Forskningsöversikt (refereegranskat)abstract
- We describe the career of John Birks as a pioneering scientist who has, over a career spanning five decades, transformed palaeoecology from a largely descriptive to a rigorous quantitative science relevant to contemporary questions in ecology and environmental change. We review his influence on students and colleagues not only at Cambridge and Bergen Universities, his places of primary employment, but also on individuals and research groups in Europe and North America. We also introduce the collection of papers that we have assembled in his honour. The papers are written by his former students and close colleagues and span many of the areas of palaeoecology to which John himself has made major contributions. These include the relationship between ecology and palaeoecology, late-glacial and Holocene palaeoecology, ecological succession, climate change and vegetation history, the role of palaeoecological techniques in reconstructing and understanding the impact of human activity on terrestrial and freshwater ecosystems and numerical analysis of multivariate palaeoecological data.
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| 3. |
- Gillson, Lindsey, et al.
(författare)
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Holocene palaeo-invasions : the link between pattern,process and scale in invasion ecology?
- 2008
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Ingår i: Landscape Ecology. - : Springer Science and Business Media LLC. - 0921-2973 .- 1572-9761. ; 23:7, s. 757-769
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- Invasion ecology has made rapid progress in recent years through synergies with landscape ecology, niche theory, evolutionary ecology and the ecology of climate change. The palaeo-record of Holocene invasions provides a rich but presently underexploited resource in exploring the pattern and process of invasions through time. In this paper, examples from the palaeo-literature are used to illustrate the spread of species through time and space, also revealing how interactions between invader and invaded communities change over the course of an invasion. The main issues addressed are adaptation and plant migration, ecological and evolutionary interactions through time, disturbance history and the landscape ecology of invasive spread. We consider invasions as a continuous variable, which may be influenced by different environmental or ecological variables at different stages of the invasion process, and we use palaeoecological examples to describe how ecological interactions change over the course of an invasion. Finally, the use of palaeoecological information to inform the management of invasions for biodiversity conservation is discussed.
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| 4. |
- Willis, Kathy J., et al.
(författare)
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4 degrees C and beyond: what did this mean for biodiversity in the past?
- 2010
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Ingår i: Systematics and Biodiversity. - : Informa UK Limited. - 1477-2000 .- 1478-0933. ; 8, s. 3-9
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- How do the predicted climatic changes (IPCC, 2007) for the next century compare in magnitude and rate to those that Earth has previously encountered? Are there comparable intervals of rapid rates of temperature change, sea-level rise and levels of atmospheric CO2 that can be used as analogues to assess possible biotic responses to future change? Or are we stepping into the great unknown? This perspective article focuses on intervals in time in the fossil record when atmospheric CO2 concentrations increased up to 1200 ppmv, temperatures in mid-to high-latitudes increased by greater than 4 degrees C within 60 years, and sea levels rose by up to 3 m higher than present. For these intervals in time, case studies of past biotic responses are presented to demonstrate the scale and impact of the magnitude and rate of such climate changes on biodiversity. We argue that although the underlying mechanisms responsible for these past changes in climate were very different (i.e. natural processes rather than anthropogenic), the rates and magnitude of climate change are similar to those predicted for the future and therefore potentially relevant to understanding future biotic response. What emerges from these past records is evidence for rapid community turnover, migrations, development of novel ecosystems and thresholds from one stable ecosystem state to another, but there is very little evidence for broad-scale extinctions due to a warming world. Based on this evidence from the fossil record, we make four recommendations for future climate-change integrated conservation strategies.
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