A 90,000-year record of Afromontane forest responses to climate change
Abstract
Pollen records from African highlands are scarce; hence, the paleoecology of the Afromontane forest and its responses to glacial cycles are poorly known. Lake Bambili (Cameroon) provides a record of vegetation changes in the tropical mountains of Africa over the past 90,000 years, with high temporal resolution. Pollen data and biome reconstructions show a diverging response of forests to climate changes; the upper tree line was extremely unstable, shifting substantially in response to glacial-interglacial climate alternation, whereas the transition between the montane and lowland forests remained remarkably stable. Such ecological instability may have had a critical influence on species richness in the Afromontane forests.
- Publication:
-
Science
- Pub Date:
- January 2019
- DOI:
- 10.1126/science.aav6821
- Bibcode:
- 2019Sci...363..177L
- Keywords:
-
- ECOLOGY