Quantifying trends and uncertainty in prehistoric forest composition in the upper Midwestern United States.

ABSTRACT: Forest ecosystems in eastern North America have been in flux for the last several thousand years, well before Euro-American land clearance and the 20th-century onset of anthropogenic climate change. However, the magnitude and uncertainty of prehistoric vegetation change have been difficult to quantify because of the multiple ecological, dispersal, and sedimentary processes that govern the relationship between forest composition and fossil pollen assemblages. Here we extend STEPPS, a Bayesian hierarchical spatiotemporal pollen-vegetation model, to estimate changes in forest composition in the upper Midwestern United States from about 2,100 to 300 yr ago. Using this approach, we find evidence for large changes in the relative abundance of some species, and significant changes in community co

SUBMITTER: Dawson A 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC6916576 | biostudies-literature | 2019 Dec

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature