By drilling into lake bottoms, researchers collect mud cores with fossil pollen that reveal the history of plants. 
ANTHONY BARNOSKY

By Elizabeth Pennisi 
Science
Aug. 5, 2020 , 12:00 PM

Recent human activity, including agriculture, has had a greater impact on North America’s plants and animals than even the glaciers that retreated more than 10,000 years ago. Those findings, presented this week at the virtual annual meeting of the Ecological Society of America, reveal that more North American forests and grasslands have abruptly disappeared in the past 250 years than in the previous 14,000 years, likely as a result of human activity. The authors say the new work, based on hundreds of fossilized pollen samples, supports the establishment of a new epoch in geological history known as the Anthropocene, with a start date in the past 250 years.

“It’s hard to overemphasize how profound the effects of ending a glacial cycle are,” says Zak Ratajczak, an ecologist at Kansas State University, Manhattan, who was not involved with the work. “So for humans to have that kind of impact is pretty amazing.”

For more than 10 years, researchers have debated when humans started to make their mark on the planet. Some argue agriculture transformed landscapes thousands of years ago, disrupting previously stable interactions between plants and animals. Others argue the launch of large-scale mining and smelting operations—seen in glacial records going back thousands of years—means the Anthropocene predates the industrial revolution. For geologists, however, the epoch starts with a different signal: nuclear explosions and a sharp uptick in fossil fuel use in the mid–20th century.

But some skeptics suggest the ice ages have had an even greater effect on the world’s ecosystems. To test that idea, Stanford University paleoecologist M. Allison Stegner turned to Neotoma, a decade-old fossil database that combines records from thousands of sites around the world. Her question: When—and how abruptly—did ecosystems change in North America over the past 14,000 years? Climate-altering glaciers, which started their retreat roughly 20,000 years ago, pulsed back during a cold period called the Younger Dryas, from about 12,800 until 11,700 years ago. After that, North America abruptly warmed, marking the beginning of our current epoch, the Holocene.

To answer her question, Stegner and colleagues looked at how vegetation shifted in locations across North America, using fossilized pollen to determine which species of plants were present at any given time. From 1900 records of mud cores drilled from lake bottom, Stegner found 400 with enough fossil pollen—and accurate enough dating—to analyze.

She and her colleagues then tracked how the mix of pollen in each core changed over time, paying close attention to abrupt shifts. Such shifts can mark the transformation of an entire ecosystem, for example, when a grassland becomes a forest or when a spruce forest changes into an oak forest. Looking at 250-year intervals, the researchers ran two types of statistical analyses that separately picked out temporary and long-term disruptions. “Allison used some very creative and rigorous methods,” says Jennifer McGuire, a paleoecologist at the Georgia Institute of Technology who was not involved with the work.

When the last ice age ended, forests and grasslands regrew across North America, creating a landscape that remained stable for thousands of years. But humans have changed all that, Stegner reports this week. Her team found just 10 abrupt changes per 250 years for every 100 sites from 11,000 years ago to about 1700 C.E. But that number doubled, to 20 abrupt changes per 100 sites, in the 250-year interval between 1700 and 1950. When the ice sheets of the Younger Dryas retreated, starting about 12,000 years ago, that number was 15. This suggests, Stegner says, that human activity starting 250 years ago—from land use change to pollution and perhaps even climate change—had more of an impact on ecosystems than the last glaciers.

The researchers also analyzed whether some regions have changed more swiftly than others. Over the past 250 years the U.S. Midwest, Southwest, and Southeast have undergone massive shifts from forest, grassland, and desert ecosystems to agriculture and tree plantations, she says. In contrast, Alaska, northern Canada, and parts of the Pacific Northwest underwent more changes as the glaciers melted than in the past 250 years.

“We already know plenty about climate change,” says Kai Zhu, an ecologist at the University of California, Santa Cruz. “This study adds land use change, [which] might accelerate climate change in altering plants at a continental scale.”

That’s worrisome, McGuire adds, because plants are the foundation of an ecosystem. “This rapid turnover is a harbinger of the extinction risk and the overall ecosystem disruption that is impending,” she says. At another meeting session, she and student Yue Wang reported “very similar trends” after using pollen to examine how forests, tundra, deserts, and other biomes have bounced back from disruptions through time. Combined, the new work “eliminates any doubt” that humans have set off a new geologic epoch, Stegner says.

doi:10.1126/science.abe1902
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By Lauren Harper, guest blogger for State of the Planet, Earth Institute, Columbia University
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Every autumn, as winter winds begin to blow and rain colorful leaves from the trees, you may notice the di􀃠erences in each leaf’s color and shape. This is a form of biodiversity, or the variety of living organisms on earth.

Biodiversity can be seen within species, between species, and within and between ecosystems. Although biodiversity is hard to measure on a global scale, in recent years there has been scienti􀃕c consensus that the planet’s biodiversity is in decline. That’s not great news, because in general, the more species that live in an area, the healthier that ecosystem is—and the better off we humans are.

Why Biodiversity Matters
Healthy ecosystems require a vast assortment of plant and animal life, from soil microbes to top level predators like bears and wolves. If one or more species is removed from this environment, no longer serving its niche, it can harm the ecosystem. Introducing foreign or invasive species into a habitat can have similar results, as the invasive species can out-compete the native species for food or territory.

Biodiversity affects our food, medicine, and environmental well-being.

Dragonflies, ladybugs and beetles pollinate many of the crops we rely on for food, as well as plants in natural ecosystems. One type of pollinator cannot do it all, hence the importance of biodiversity. Loss of habitat—for example, when humans convert meadows into parking lots or backyards—is reducing pollinator populations. If
pollinators were to disappear entirely, we would lose over one-third of all crop production. This would reduce or eliminate the availability of foods like honey, chocolate, berries, nuts and coffee.

Many modern medicines, like aspirin, caffeine and morphine, are modeled after chemical compositions found in plants. If undiscovered or uninvestigated wildlife species disappear, it would disadvantage scientists trying to uncover new sources of inspiration for future vaccines and medications.

Biodiversity also provides ecosystem services or benefits to people. These benefits include: hurricane storm surge protection, carbon sequestration, water filtration, fossil fuel generation, oxygen production and recreational opportunities. Without a myriad of unique ecosystems and their respective diverse plant and animal life, our quality of life may become threatened.

Climate Impacts

To many, the term “climate change” feels like a buzzword that encompasses a large amount of negative impacts. Climate means the average weather conditions in an area over a long period of time—usually 30 years or longer. A region’s climate includes systems in the air, water, land and living organisms. Climate change is the shift or abnormal change in climate patterns. As the planet warms quickly, mostly due to human activity, climate patterns in regions around the world will fluctuate. Ecosystems and biodiversity will be forced to fluctuate along with the regional climate, and that could harm many species.

These climate change impacts are in part due to how we have altered land use. Turning natural areas into cities or agricultural fields not only diminishes biodiversity, but can make warming worse by chopping down trees and plants that help cool the planet. Changes in climate can also intensify droughts, decrease water supply, threaten food security, erode and inundate coastlines, and weaken natural resilience infrastructure that humans depend on.

Politicians have proposed several solutions, plans and international agreements to tackle the long-standing issues that biodiversity loss and climate change present. In the meantime, we as individuals can take small actions in our daily lives to reduce our environmental impacts on the planet. Unplugging your unused appliances, changing
to LED lightbulbs, carpooling, and participating in meatless Monday are all ways we can help to slow climate change. Growing native plants and staying informed about the origins and the ethics behind the products you purchase is another way you can help. These types of behavioral shifts can steer businesses and policy makers toward
incorporating sustainable practices that reduce greenhouse gas emissions and halt biodiversity loss.

Lauren Harper is an intern in the Earth Institute communications department. She is a graduate student in the Environmental Science and Policy Program at Columbia’s School of International and Public Affairs.

Also read:

Climate Change Is Becoming a Top Threat to Biodiversity - click here

 Habitat loss doesn’t just affect species, it impacts networks of ecological relationships - click here