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Per Möller

Per Möller

Professor

Per Möller

Substantial light woodland and open vegetation characterized the temperate forest biome before Homo sapiens

Author

  • Elena A. Pearce
  • Florence F Mazier
  • Signe Normand
  • Corrie Bakels
  • Ralph Fyfe
  • Valérie Andrieu
  • Zofia Balwierz
  • Krzysztof Bińka
  • Steve Borham
  • Olga K Borisova
  • Anna Broström
  • Jacques-Luoise de Beaulieu
  • Cunhai Gao
  • Penélope González-Sampériz
  • Wojciech Granoszewski
  • Anna Hrynowiecka
  • Piotr Kołaczek
  • Petr Kuneš
  • Donatella Magri
  • Małgorzata Malkiewicz
  • Tim Mighall
  • Alice M. Milner
  • Per Möller
  • Małgorzata Nita
  • Bożena Noryśkiewicz
  • Irena Agnieszka Pidek
  • Maurice Reille
  • Ann-Marie Robertsson
  • J. Sakari Salonen
  • Patrick Schläfli
  • Jeroen Schokker
  • Paolo Scussolini
  • Vaida Šeirienė
  • Jaqueline Strahl
  • Brigitte Urban
  • Filip Van Beirendonck
  • Hanna Winter
  • Jens-Christian Svenning
Show all

Summary, in English

The extent of vegetation openness in past European landscapes is widely debated. In particular, the temperate forest biome has traditionally been defined as dense, closed-canopy forest; however, some argue that large herbivores maintained greater openness or even wood-pasture conditions. Here, we address this question for the Last Interglacial period (129,000–116,000 years ago), before Homo sapiens–linked megafauna declines and anthropogenic landscape transformation. We applied the vegetation reconstruction method REVEALS to 96 Last Interglacial pollen records. We found that light woodland and open vegetation represented, on average, more than 50% cover during this period. The degree of openness was highly variable and only partially linked to climatic factors, indicating the importance of natural disturbance regimes. Our results show that the temperate forest biome was historically heterogeneous rather than uniformly dense, which is consistent with the dependency of much of contemporary European biodiversity on open vegetation and light woodland.

Department/s

  • Quaternary Sciences

Publishing year

2023-11-10

Language

English

Publication/Series

Science Advances

Volume

9

Issue

45

Document type

Journal article

Publisher

American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS)

Topic

  • Ecology
  • Climate Research

Status

Published

ISBN/ISSN/Other

  • ISSN: 2375-2548