Forest mosaics, not savanna corridors, dominated in Southeast Asia during the Last Glacial Maximum.

ABSTRACT: The dominant paradigm is that large tracts of Southeast Asia's lowland rainforests were replaced with a "savanna corridor" during the cooler, more seasonal climates of the Last Glacial Maximum (LGM) (23,000 to 19,000 y ago). This interpretation has implications for understanding the resilience of Asia's tropical forests to projected climate change, implying a vulnerability to "savannization". A savanna corridor is also an important foundation for archaeological interpretations of how humans moved through and settled insular Southeast Asia and Australia. Yet an up-to-date, multiproxy, and empirical examination of the palaeoecological evidence for this corridor is lacking. We conducted qualitative and statistical analyses of 59 palaeoecological records across Southeast Asia to test the evide

SUBMITTER: Hamilton R 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC10769823 | biostudies-literature | 2024 Jan

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature