A palaeothermometer of ancient Indigenous fisheries reveals increases in mean temperature of the catch over five millennia.

ABSTRACT: Climate change is altering the distribution and composition of marine fish populations globally, which presents substantial risks to the social and economic well-being of humanity. While deriving long-term climatic baselines is an essential step for detecting and attributing the magnitude of climate change and its impacts, these baselines tend to be limited to historical datasets and palaeoecological sediment records. Here, we develop a method for estimating the 'ancient Mean Temperature of the Catch' (aMTC) using Indigenous fisheries catch records from two archaeological sites in the northeast Pacific. Despite different catch compositions, we observe an increase in aMTC over a 5,000-year period at two contemporaneously occupied archaeological sites in southwestern British Columbia, Canada

SUBMITTER: Hillis D 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC9592643 | biostudies-literature | 2022

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature