Dark ages and dark areas: global deforestation in the deep past

Williams, Michael

doi:10.1006/jhge.1999.0189

Cited by 184 publications

(147 citation statements)

References 26 publications

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“…In fact, distributing land use based on a large-scale gridded climate and soil datasets offers only a rough estimate of places that would have been hospitable to preindustrial farmers and pastoralists. While agriculturalists usually favored fertile loess soils and areas where natural vegetation could be cleared and soils prepared using fire and with the tools of the era [74], there are other factors that influence the selection of a settlement location, e.g., position along trade routes, distance from non-agricultural food resources, defense and other strategic reasons that are not easily predicted on the basis of the properties of the physical environment. The compilation of archaeological 14 C dates can be used to infer settlement patterns in the distant past (e.g., [75][76][77][78]), and it could be possible to interpret this information as a proxy for land use.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Constraining the Deforestation History of Europe: Evaluation of Historical Land Use Scenarios with Pollen-Based Land Cover Reconstructions

Kaplan

Krumhardt

Gaillard

et al. 2017

Land

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Anthropogenic land cover change (ALCC) is the most important transformation of the Earth system that occurred in the preindustrial Holocene, with implications for carbon, water and sediment cycles, biodiversity and the provision of ecosystem services and regional and global climate. For example, anthropogenic deforestation in preindustrial Eurasia may have led to feedbacks to the climate system: both biogeophysical, regionally amplifying winter cold and summer warm temperatures, and biogeochemical, stabilizing atmospheric CO 2 concentrations and thus influencing global climate. Quantification of these effects is difficult, however, because scenarios of anthropogenic land cover change over the Holocene vary widely, with increasing disagreement back in time. Because land cover change had such widespread ramifications for the Earth system, it is essential to assess current ALCC scenarios in light of observations and provide guidance on which models are most realistic. Here, we perform a systematic evaluation of two widely-used ALCC scenarios (KK10 and HYDE3.1) in northern and part of central Europe using an independent, pollen-based reconstruction of Holocene land cover (REVEALS). Considering that ALCC in Europe primarily resulted in deforestation, we compare modeled land use with the cover of non-forest vegetation inferred from the pollen data. Though neither land cover change scenario matches the pollen-based reconstructions precisely, KK10 correlates well with REVEALS at the country scale, while HYDE systematically underestimates land use with increasing magnitude with time in the past. Discrepancies between modeled and reconstructed land use are caused by a number of factors, including assumptions of per-capita land use and socio-cultural factors that cannot be predicted on the basis of the characteristics of the physical environment, including dietary preferences, long-distance trade, the location of urban areas and social organization.

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Constraining the Deforestation History of Europe: Evaluation of Historical Land Use Scenarios with Pollen-Based Land Cover Reconstructions

Kaplan

Krumhardt

Gaillard

et al. 2017

Land

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“…Deforestation is one of the key human transformations of the earth [1]. The Food and Agriculture Organization of United Nations (FAO) states that, although the global rate of forest loss has slowed during the last decade, total forest area continues to decline [2].…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Deforestation and Changes in Landscape Patterns from 1979 to 2006 in Suan County, DPR Korea

Pang¹,

et al. 2013

Forests

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Abstract:The Democratic People's Republic of Korea (DPR Korea) suffered considerable upland deforestation during the 1990s, yet its consequences remain relatively unknown. This paper examines this deforestation and resulting land-use change patterns by analysis of Landsat satellite images from 1979, 1992, 2001 and 2006 in Suan County, Hwanghae Province, DPR Korea. Results show that there has been significant closed canopy forest loss and a dramatic expansion of agricultural land during this period. Most forestlands were converted to farmland during 1992 and 2001. Food shortages, along with fuelwood and timber extraction, are considered to be the main drivers of deforestation. Landscape analysis also showed that closed canopy forests have been severely fragmented and degraded. These research findings make a contribution to an insufficient body of literature on environmental issues in DPR Korea and helps to establish a baseline for monitoring land-use and land-cover changes in the country.

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“…Human activity not only transformed the forest vegetation in many parts of the world but also triggered indirect physical and chemical changes in peatlands. Since the Early Medieval period, the vegetation of European forests was considerably transformed (Ralska-Jasiewiczowa & Latałowa, 1996;Williams, 2000;Ralska-Jasiewiczowa et al, 2004). Deforestations that progressed since the Medieval Age caused increased run-off and abrupt hydrological fluctuations.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Multiproxy study of anthropogenic and climatic changes in the last two millennia from a small mire in central Poland

et al. 2009

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The _ Zabieniec kettle hole is the first peatland in central Poland analyzed quantitatively with four biotic proxies (plant macrofossils, pollen, testate amoebae and chironomids) to reconstruct the past environmental change. Palaeoecological data were supported by historical and archaeological records. We focused on autogenic vegetation change and human impact in relation to climatic effects. The aims of our study were (a) to describe the development history of the mire during the last 2,000 years, (b) to date and reconstruct the anthropogenic land-use changes and (c) to discuss a possible climatic signal in the peat archive. The combination of proxies revealed dramatic shifts that took place in the peatland since the Roman Period.

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Dark ages and dark areas: global deforestation in the deep past

Cited by 184 publications

References 26 publications

Constraining the Deforestation History of Europe: Evaluation of Historical Land Use Scenarios with Pollen-Based Land Cover Reconstructions

Constraining the Deforestation History of Europe: Evaluation of Historical Land Use Scenarios with Pollen-Based Land Cover Reconstructions

Deforestation and Changes in Landscape Patterns from 1979 to 2006 in Suan County, DPR Korea

Multiproxy study of anthropogenic and climatic changes in the last two millennia from a small mire in central Poland

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