Historical Ecology E-Book
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- Herausgeber: John Wiley & Sons
- Kategorie: Fachliteratur
- Sprache: Englisch
This book addresses present-day landscapes, ecosystem functioning and biodiversity as legacies of the past. It implements an interdisciplinary approach to understand how natural or human-impacted ecological systems have changed over time. Historical Ecology combines theory, methods, regional case studies and syntheses to provide a complete up-to-date overview of historical ecology. Beginning with the crucial role of time and inference from observed patterns, the book critically reviews the main methodological approaches, including monitoring of permanent plots, analysis of old maps, repeat photography, remote sensing, soil analysis, charcoal analysis, botanical indicators, and combinations of these methods applied to forest ecosystems. A series of case studies from various biomes shows how historical ecology can help in understanding today's socio-ecosystems, such as mainland and island forests, orchards, tundra and coastal dunes. The book concludes by showing how historical ecology can answer timely fundamental research questions and provide science-based evidence for landscape and ecosystem management.
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Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2022
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Table of Contents
Cover
Title Page
Copyright
1 A General Introduction to Historical Ecology
1.1. The roots of historical ecology
1.2. A multidisciplinary approach of socio-ecosystems
1.3. Recent trends in historical ecology
1.4. The way forward
1.5. References
2 Historical Resurveys Reveal Causes of Long-term Ecological Change
2.1. Serious ecological changes are pervasive
2.2. Anthropogenic drivers of ecological change
2.3. Kinds of ecological change
2.4. Understanding the forces driving ecological change
2.5. Conclusion
2.6. References
3 Getting the Right Answer Can Take a While: Long-term Ecological Field Studies as Historical Ecology
3.1. Introduction
3.2. Fernow Experimental Forest
3.3. Long-term studies at Fernow Experimental Forest, West Virginia
3.4. Conclusion
3.5. References
4 Gaps and Cracks in Land Cover Mapping for Historical Ecology
4.1. Introduction
4.2. Three main steps of past land cover mapping
4.3. Land cover in the 19th century: the old cadasters
4.4. Land cover in the 20th century: aerial photographs
4.5. Present land cover: modern databases
4.6. From different sources to one land cover typology
4.7. Conclusion
4.8. References
5 The Use of Repeat Photography in African Historical Ecology
5.1. Repeat photography as an emerging tool in African historical ecology
5.2. Repeat photography and landscape change in Africa
5.3. Long-term change in plant populations as revealed by repeat photography
5.4. Strengths and limitations
5.5. Future directions
5.6. References
6 Remote Sensing for Historical Ecology
6.1. Introduction
6.2. Landscape spatio-temporal changes as a proxy of biodiversity
6.3. Mapping landscapes at different dates
6.4. Modeling the effects of spatio-temporal changes on present-day biodiversity
6.5. References
7 Soil Archives: Where Soilscape History Meets Present-day Ecosystems
7.1. Introduction
7.2. Mechanisms of soil archiving and the associated dynamics
7.3. Examples of soil archives and their influence on current ecosystems
7.4. Conclusion
7.5. References
8 Continuous and Nested Time in Historical Ecology: Application to Soil Studies
8.1. Interdisciplinarity and time in historical ecology
8.2. Continuous time
8.3. Nested time
8.4. Different disciplines, different tools
8.5. Examples of nested and continuous time: soils and strata
8.6. Conclusion
8.7. References
9 The Analysis of Relic Charcoal Kilns for the Assessment of Forest Trajectories
9.1. Introduction
9.2. Looking at the platform of the kiln
9.3. Looking at the charcoal pieces
9.4. Looking at the ages
9.5. Conclusion
9.6. References
10 Ancient Trees and Botanical Indicators as Evidence for Change and Continuity in Landscape Evolution
10.1. Introduction
10.2. What is ancient woodland? Questions of woods versus old-growth forest, and of continuity versus antiquity
10.3. The value of ancient woods
10.4. Methodology
10.5. An emerging woodland paradigm
10.6. A simple new conceptual framework
10.7. Conclusion
10.8. References
11 Towards a Methodological Framework for Investigating the Hidden History of Woodland Covers
11.1. Why talk about hidden history when studying forest vegetation?
11.2. From recent forests: a synecological point of view
11.3. From the walls: ancient documents and maps
11.4. From the wood: dendrochronology
11.5. From the ground: palynology
11.6. From the air: LiDAR
11.7. Discussion
11.8. References
12 The Gate to the Forest is in its History
12.1. Introduction
12.2. The ancient woodland idea
12.3. Legacies of woodland management
12.4. Seeing the trees, not the woods
12.5. Exploring the distant past
12.6. Trees and woods from the past to the future
12.7. References
13 Plant Assemblages and Ecosystem Functioning, a Legacy of Long-term Interactions with Large Herbivores
13.1. Introduction
13.2. Large herbivores are ecosystem dominant interactors
13.3. Long-term effects and methodological changes
13.4. Plant–herbivore interactions over the long-term
13.5. Modern vegetation trajectories driven by large herbivores
13.6. Perspectives, rewilding and ecosystem restoration
13.7. References
14 A Historical Ecology of the Compiègne Forest (N France)
14.1. Introduction
14.2. The ancient forest: an intensively managed agricultural landscape?
14.3. The Medieval forest: a woodland (re)birth or a savanna-like ecosystem?
14.4. The contemporary forest (19th century onward): a closed-canopy multifunctional woodland
14.5. Conclusion
14.6. References
15 The Chestnut Orchards in the Bolognese Apennines: A Vanishing Socio-ecological Habitat
15.1. Introduction
15.2. The traditional chestnut orchards
15.3. The chestnut groves of the Bolognese Apennines
15.4. A changing world: abandonment, diseases and other problems
15.5. The turning point of the 1980s
15.6. Current constraints and future perspectives
15.7. References
16 Claudius’ Coin in the Forest – Niche Construction and Strategies by Early Colonizers of Boreal Inlands in Central Scandinavia
16.1. Introduction
16.2. Concepts and theoretical framework
16.3. A historical overview of the colonization
16.4. A structured landscape
16.5. Concluding remarks
16.6. References
17 Recent History of Vegetation Changes in the Arctic
17.1. Introduction
17.2. The Arctic tundra biome
17.3. The Arctic historical ecological archive
17.4. Changes over time in tundra vegetation
17.5. Synthesis and perspectives
17.6. References
18 Reconstructing the Impact of Humans on Aotearoa New Zealand’s Biodiversity
18.1. Introduction
18.2. Archaeological evidence for anthropogenic impact in New Zealand
18.3. Paleovegetation change in pre- and post-European contact New Zealand
18.4. Utilizing Aotearoa’s natural resources: Māori cultivation and translocation of flora and fauna
18.5. Evolutionary consequences of Polynesian and European arrival
18.6. Conclusion
18.7. References
19 Historical Ecology of the Coastal Aeolian Sedimentary Systems of the Canary Islands
19.1. Introduction
19.2. Study sites
19.3. Historical evolution of the coastal aeolian sedimentary systems of the Canary Islands
19.4. Conclusion
19.5. References
20 Historical Forest Microclimates
20.1. Drivers of microclimate at the plot, forest and landscape scale
20.2. Methods to infer microclimate from the past and predict into the future
20.3. Why do historical microclimates matter? Impacts on biodiversity from the plot to landscape scale
20.4. Conclusion
20.5. References
21 Causes and Consequences of Extinction Debts: Perspectives for Historical Ecology and Biological Conservation
21.1. Introduction
21.2. Causes and processes entailing extinction debts
21.3. Studying and detecting extinction debts from ecosystem history
21.4. Implications for biodiversity conservation and management
21.5. Conclusion
21.6. References
22 Historical Ecology for the Past and the Future: Organizing at Local and Regional Scales
22.1. Introduction
22.2. Founding IHOPE
22.3. Integrating the social sciences and humanities
22.4. Historical ecology
22.5. Conclusion
22.6. References
List of Authors
Index
Wiley End User License Agreement
List of Tables
Chapter 4
Table 4.1. Land cover classes for the parcels of the study site, Napoleonic cada...
Chapter 8
Table 8.1. Organic matter components and their respective transit times
Chapter 10
Table 10.1. Exemplar botanical indicators of ancient woodland sites – based on t...
Chapter 11
Table 11.1. Fitting temporal and spatial scale according to disciplines in fores...
Table 11.2. French examples of studies involved interdisciplinary in forest hist...
Chapter 12
Table 12.1. Types of evidence used to explore the history of Wytham Woods, near ...
Table 12.2. Contrasting visions for European natural landscapes in the mid-Holoc...
Chapter 19
Table 19.1. Main land cover changes over the past 70 years in the aeolian sedime...
Chapter 20
Table 20.1. Overview of the drivers of forest microclimate from the plot to the ...
Guide
Cover
Table of Contents
Title Page
Copyright
1 A General Introduction to Historical Ecology
List of Authors
Index
End User License Agreement
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SCIENCES
Ecosystems and Environment
Field Directors – Françoise Gaill and Dominique Joly
Historical Ecology, Subject Head – Dominique Joly
Historical Ecology
Learning from the Past to Understand the Present and Forecast the Future of Ecosystems
Coordinated by
Guillaume Decocq
First published 2022 in Great Britain and the United States by ISTE Ltd and John Wiley & Sons, Inc.
Apart from any fair dealing for the purposes of research or private study, or criticism or review, as permitted under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988, this publication may only be reproduced, stored or transmitted, in any form or by any means, with the prior permission in writing of the publishers, or in the case of reprographic reproduction in accordance with the terms and licenses issued by the CLA. Enquiries concerning reproduction outside these terms should be sent to the publishers at the undermentioned address:
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John Wiley & Sons, Inc.
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www.wiley.com
© ISTE Ltd 2022
The rights of Guillaume Decocq to be identified as the author of this work have been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
Any opinions, findings, and conclusions or recommendations expressed in this material are those of the author(s), contributor(s) or editor(s) and do not necessarily reflect the views of ISTE Group.
Library of Congress Control Number: 2022940278
British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data
A CIP record for this book is available from the British Library
ISBN 978-1-78945-090-3
ERC code:
PE10 Earth System Science
PE10_3 Climatology and climate change
PE10_4 Terrestrial ecology, land cover change
LS8 Ecology, Evolution and Environmental Biology
LS8_4 Evolutionary ecology
1A General Introduction to Historical Ecology
Guillaume DECOCQ
Jules Verne University of Picardie, Amiens, France
Since the second half of the 19th century, several human and social sciences have increasingly incorporated the environment when interpreting human practices and behavior. At the same time, ecological sciences have paid increasing attention to human factors and history when analyzing biodiversity and functioning of forest ecosystems and landscapes. Historical ecology emerged in this context.
How ecological systems have changed over time and how past human activities impacted these dynamics are long-standing research questions in ecology. But the emergence of historical ecology as a discipline aiming at answering these questions is more recent. Though many definitions have been given in the literature, we can simply define historical ecology, after Russel (1997), as the field of ecology which aims to reconstruct the history of ecosystems and landscapes in order to analyze how past events have impacted present days biodiversity and ecosystem functioning. This includes causes and consequences of interactions between humans and the environment (Beller et al. 2017), and as such, this definition is quite close to the one used by anthropologists: an interdisciplinary research program concerned with comprehending temporal and spatial dimensions in the relationships of human societies to local environments and the cumulative global effects of these relationships (Balée 2006). Historical ecology does not exclude any time period a priori, even if most studies focused on historical times (i.e. for which written records are available, even if the date varies among regions around the world).
1.1. The roots of historical ecology
We can trace the roots of historical ecology back to several “undisciplined” scientists, who paved non-conventional roads from their respective discipline, independently from each other. An extensive review can be found in Szabó’s epistemological essay (Szabó 2015). Seeking in the past the drivers of current ecological patterns is an old idea. For example, in the 14th century, Dante already described the historical degradation of Mediterranean forests. Later, in the 18th century, German foresters compared old records of forests to recent ones in order to highlight the degradation of forest ecosystems (Stisser 1737), while in England, Barrington published the first paper about indigenous versus introduced tree species in 1769. Georges Perkins Marsh is usually considered as one of the early pioneers of modern historical ecology, with the publication of his seminal book “The Earth as Modified by Human Action” in 1874, though the term “historical ecology” explicitly appeared in Tubbs’ book on the New Forest (1968).
Several disciplines have independently contributed to the emergence of historical ecology:
–
Forest history
, sometimes labeled historical biogeography of forests. The French historian Alfred Maury may be considered as the founder of this school, with his remarkable thesis on the French forests from the pre-Roman to the modern times (Maury 1850).
–
Historical geography
, especially through the French geographer Vidal de la Blache, who launched the journal
Annales de Géographie
in 1891. This journal published a large number of regional naturalist monographs focusing on landscapes as human-made structures.
–
Ecology
and, more precisely, the field of
paleoecology
, which aims to reconstruct past ecological communities and their dynamics in response to natural and anthropogenic drivers using proxies such as pollens and macro-remains.
–
Rural history
, for which the French historians Fèbvre and Bloch were among the pioneers via the journal
Annales d’Histoire économique et sociale
they launched in 1929. This journal published a large number of papers dealing with impacts of the environment on human activities and landscape planning.
–
Landscape archaeology
, with the seminal work of Hoskins in England, published in 1955. This school was the first to use innovative tools such as aerial photographs to detect and map archaeological artifacts at broader spatial scales, such as former Roman
villae
in croplands. More recently
, environmental archaeology
extended the scope of landscape archaeology to the reconstruction of the relationships between past societies and the environments they lived in, using a wide range of proxies and covering the whole Quaternary era (Wilkinson and Stevens 2003).
–
Environmental history
, which roots in social science and ethnology, and aims to study human interaction with the natural world over time. Interestingly, environmental history emerged in North America with Nash (1967), and mostly makes use of written sources and oral surveys.
In the second half of the 20th century, these various approaches progressively converged and the old partition between disciplines tended to relax: time makes historical ecology more and more a multidiscipline.
1.2. A multidisciplinary approach of socio-ecosystems
Current research projects in historical ecology most often rely on multidisciplinary approaches, i.e. they involve already long-established disciplines to focus on a joint topic or object. Most often, this object is a given ecosystem or landscape, which is considered a socio-ecosystem (Redman et al. 2004). Socio-ecosystems are hybrid systems: they are patterned by the interaction between natural drivers (e.g. geomorphology, soil types, natural vegetation) and anthropogenic drivers (e.g. landscape planning, land-use, resource exploitation). A typical example is former orchards that experienced secondary succession following abandonment (see Chapter 15). Investigating the history of socio-ecosystems thus requires the analysis of two types of archives: ecological archives (e.g. soils, plant remains) and human archives (e.g. written sources, archaeological remains).
Among ecological archives, soil is probably the most relevant one. Soils can keep the memory of past environmental conditions for a very long time, and provide historical ecologists with a number of physical, chemical and biological proxies (see Chapter 7). Depending on their properties, they can preserve plant remains (e.g. pollen, seeds and fruits, charcoals, phytoliths; e.g. Schoonmaker and Foster 1991; Feiss et al. 2017) and animal remains (Fitzpatrick and Keegan 2007), as well as their DNA (Rawlence et al. 2014; Birks and Birks 2016; see also Chapter 18). Even land-uses that took place a very long time ago left an imprint in soil properties, which often still impact the current vegetation. For example, former Roman settlements usually harbor a luxuriant vegetation dominated by eutrophic, neutrophilous species, while on former Roman cultivated fields, the vegetation is more scattered and dominated by acidophilous species (Dupouey et al. 2002; Plue et al. 2008; see also Chapter 14). Many case studies have been published for a range of regions of Western Europe, all with similar results, so that some plant communities are even used as indicators in field archaeological surveys (Decocq 2004) and can guide targeted archaeological excavations. However, soil is a palimpsest and its biological activity typically clouds the vertical layering of deposits, rendering difficult the reconstruction of accurate time sequences, especially when a single proxy is investigated (e.g. soil charcoals; Feiss et al. (2017), but see Chapter 9). It is thus necessary to integrate several proxies with contrasted spatio-temporal resolution to get accurate time reconstructions (see Chapter 8), and to cross-reference the information with other ecological archives, such as botanical indicators (see Chapters 10–12) and also human archives.
Regarding human archives, the availability of written sources is limited and both their quantity and quality decrease as we go further back in the past. For example, maps and cadasters allow us to reconstruct landscape changes over the last few centuries, but with a low reliability for the most ancient ones (see Chapter 4). Aerial photography allows us to cover only the last few decades but still with important insights into fast-changing landscapes (see Chapter 5). Aside comparing the same site at different times, remote sensing techniques can be used to seek archaeological artifacts over extended areas, by evidencing vegetation (e.g. aerial photography) or microtopographic (e.g. LiDAR) anomalies that the landscape has inherited from past human activities (Challis et al. 2008; Beck 2011, see also Chapter 6). Archaeological excavations greatly help in interpreting past human–ecosystem interactions but are more rarely implemented in historical ecology projects, since they can cover only restricted areas (but see Chapter 16).
1.3. Recent trends in historical ecology
Over the last few decades, studies in historical ecology have shifted from purely qualitative and descriptive to more quantitative and mechanistic. Old concepts have been revisited and novel insights have emerged. A typical example is the concept of ancient woodlands. A number of descriptive studies, mostly from British plant ecologists (Rackham 1980; Peterken 1981), evidenced differences in plant species composition between ancient woodlands (i.e. woodlands that have continuously existed since the date of the oldest available map, which usually dates back to the end of the 18th century in most countries; Hermy and Verheyen 2007) and recent woodlands (i.e. woodlands that have established on former agricultural lands, within the last two centuries). Today, the concept of ancient forest species has largely permeated vegetation science and conservation biology (see Chapters 10 and 12). Now, historical ecology turns to understand the underlying mechanisms. Experimental studies, mostly conducted in Belgium for Europe and at the Harvard forest for North America, counterintuitively revealed that these compositional differences were primarily explained by species’ dispersal capacities, rather than by habitat quality. In other words, ancient forest species such as Anemone nemorosa, Oxalis acetosella or Hyacinthoides non-scripta in Europe hardly colonize recent forest patches, not because they cannot establish but because diaspores hardly disperse from source populations to recently created forest habitats, especially in fragmented landscapes. In comparison, shade-tolerant species that are not dispersal-limited (e.g. Urtica dioica, Galium aparine or Veronica hederifolia) can colonize recent and ancient forests equally well. This colonization capacity has even been quantified by an index ranging from minus 100 to 100 (reviewed in Flinn and Vellend 2005; Hermy and Verheyen 2007). This example illustrates an important step in the development of historical ecology as a science, since process-based hypotheses are now experimentally tested.
Historical ecology also leads to hot debates in ecology. A remarkable example is the controversy about what the primeval European forest used to look like. The dominant idea has long been the closed-canopy forest hypothesis, mostly based on the forest dynamics observed in nature reserves, once any significant human pressure is removed, as well as on pollen records. This hypothesis has been convincingly challenged by the savannah hypothesis introduced by Rackham (1998) and further supported by a number of arguments reviewed in Vera (2000). The main argument of the latter hypothesis is that many species of big herbivores used to graze in forests (e.g. buffalos, aurochs, wild horses), and likely maintain the forested areas quite open. Most of these species went extinct in the early Medieval times, so that natural succession conducted to closed-canopy forests with a typically shade-tolerant understory flora. Beyond the fact that these hypotheses are still controversial (e.g. Birks 2005), both emerged as a result of historical ecology approaches of forests (see also Chapter 13).
Furthermore, historical ecology tackles timely topics in ecology, for example the impact of global climate changes on ecosystems. Progress in ecoinformatic has rendered possible the use of large database compiling old ecological records. For example, at least since the end of the 19th century, vegetation scientists have accumulated millions of vegetation relevés worldwide. When these relevés can be relocalized, it is possible to resurvey the same plots decades later (e.g. Verheyen et al. 2017). The comparison between old and new relevés then makes it possible to quantify vegetation changes and subsequently infer the drivers of these changes, by using trait-based approaches (e.g. Closset-Kopp et al. 2019) or by computing correlation with measured changes in environmental factors (e.g. Perring et al. 2016). Although inferring processes from resurvey studies is not trivial (see Chapter 2), legacy studies led to important results, for example: the overriding influence of canopy closure on atmospheric nitrogen deposits in explaining vegetation eutrophication (Verheyen et al. 2012); the importance of land-use legacies in explaining the response of forest biodiversity to global change (Perring et al. 2016); and the crucial role of forest management in preserving forest microclimate to buffer against global warming and conserve the forest understory biodiversity (De Frenne et al. 2014; Bernhardt-Römermann et al. 2015; see also Chapter 20). Long-term monitoring studies provide further support to the inferences made from these retrospective analyses (see Chapter 3). Historical ecology has evidenced the inertia of ecosystem in their response to environmental changes and led to novel concepts that largely permeate ecology, for example the concepts of extinction debt and colonization credit (Kuussaari et al. 2009; Jackson and Sax 2010; see also Chapter 21).
1.4. The way forward
If the roots of historical ecology are in Europe, its ramifications now reach all continents. Several international working groups dedicated to historical ecology emerged, within existing ecological societies such as the International Association for Landscape Ecology (IALE; https://www.landscape-ecology.org/page-18083) and the International Association for Vegetation Science (IAVS; https://www.iavs.org/page/working-groups_historical-vegetation-ecology), and as standalone associations, such as the American Society for Environmental History (https://aseh.org) and its European counterpart (http://eseh.org). This international spread of historical ecology is associated with a diversification of the studied systems. Temperate and Mediterranean forests are still an important focus (see Chapters 3, 9, 10, 11, 12, 14, 15 and 20), but this book shows that historical ecology now concerns all types of ecosystem and landscape: boreo-nemoral forests (Chapter 16), arctic (Chapter 17) and tropical (Chapter 5) vegetation, temperate island (Chapter 18), subtropical coastal dunes (Chapter 19), always with important insights for the understanding of how past interactions between natural ecosystems and human societies have driven current biodiversity patterns and ecosystem functioning.
The challenge for historical ecology since the beginning has been to understand present-day ecosystems by putting them in their historical context. Moreover, historical ecology becomes an applied discipline, for example, to identify reference plant communities needed by restoration ecology practitioners (Swetnam et al. 1999; Egan and Howell 2001; Foster 2002; Jackson and Hobbs 2009) and, more generally, to use the past to predict the future (see Chapter 22). It is thus becoming a field which informs stakeholders and managers. Landscapes and ecosystems cannot be reduced to natural ecological systems disturbed by human activities. Instead, they are dynamic socio-ecosystems in which human activities are both causes and consequences of the observed patterns through time and across spatial scales. This is a timely task at the Anthropocene epoch, since understanding drivers of past ecosystem changes may allow us to predict future changes in response to interacting environmental and human drivers. Time has come to understand the mechanisms behind these changes, in order to open the way for a functional historical ecology. Historical ecology has the potential to become a “transdiscipline” dedicated to the study of complex socio-ecosystem dynamics.
1.5. References
Balée, W. (2006). The research program of historical ecology. Annu. Rev. Anthropol., 35, 75–98.
Beck, A. (2011). Archaeological applications of multi/hyper-spectral data – Challenges and potential. In Remote Sensing for Archaeological Heritage Management, Cowley, D. (ed.). Archaeolingua, Budapest.
Beller, E., McClenachan, L., Trant, A., Sanderson, E.W., Rhemtulla, J., Guerrini, A., Grossinger, R., Higgs, E. (2017). Toward principles of historical ecology. Am. J. Bot., 104, 645–648.
Bernhardt-Römermann, M., Baeten, L., Craven, D., De Frenne, P., Hédl, R., Lenoir, J., Bert, D., Brunet, J., Chudomelová, M., Decocq, G. et al. (2015). Drivers of temporal changes in temperate forest plant diversity vary across spatial scales. Glob. Change Biol., 21, 3726–3737.
Birks, H.J.B. (2005). Mind the gap: How open were European primeval forests? Tr. Ecol. Evol., 20, 154–156.
Birks, H.J.B. and Birks, H.H. (2016). How have studies of ancient DNA from sediments contributed to the reconstruction of Quaternary floras? New Phytol., 209, 499–506.
Challis, K., Kokalj, Z., Kincey, M., Moscrop, D., Howard, A.J. (2008). Airborne lidar and historic environment records. Antiquity, 82, 1055–1064.
Closset-Kopp, D., Hattab, T., Decocq, G. (2019). Do drivers of forestry vehicles also drive herb layer changes (1970–2015) in a temperate forest with contrasting habitat and management conditions? J. Ecol., 107, 1439–1456.
De Frenne, P., Rodriguez-Sanchez, F., Coomes, D.A., Baeten, L., Verstraeten, G., Vellend, M., Bernhardt-Römermann, M., Brown, C.D., Brunet, J., Cornelis, J. et al. (2014). Forest canopy closure buffers plant community responses to global warming. Proc. Nat. Acad. Sci. USA, 110, 18561–18565.
Decocq, G. (2004). Utilisation de la flore et de la végétation actuelles en prospection archéologique. In Méthodes et initiations d’histoire et d’archéologie, Racinet, P. and Schwerdroffer, J. (eds). Editions du Temps, Nantes.
Dupouey, J.L., Dambrine, E., Laffite, J.D., Moares, C. (2002). Irreversible impact of past land use on forest soils and biodiversity. Ecology, 83, 2978–2984.
Egan, D. and Howell, E.A. (eds) (2001). The Historical Ecology Handbook: A Restorationist’s Guide to Reference Ecosystems. Island Press, Washington.
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2Historical Resurveys Reveal Causes of Long-term Ecological Change
Donald M. WALLER
University of Wisconsin, Madison, USA
2.1. Serious ecological changes are pervasive
Historical approaches have always informed ecology but have gained great importance now as we struggle to understand the forces driving the many ecological changes occurring around us. These changes are pervasive and accelerating, yet they remain largely hidden as they are difficult to track. Documenting even simple changes in diversity is impossible except where we have historical data. One of Europe’s revered natural areas, the Bialowieza forest in Poland, lost 45% of its 133 vascular plant species between 1969 and 1992 (Kwiatkowska 1994). Two protected virgin forests in Pennsylvania lost 59% and 80% of their plant species between 1929 and 1995 (Rooney and Dress 1997). Three state parks in northern Wisconsin, USA, lost 50% of their plant diversity over the past 50 years (Rooney et al. 2004). Middlesex Fells, a 400 ha park near Boston, USA, lost 37% of its 422 plant species between 1894 and 1993 (Drayton and Primack 1996). Although losing species from small particular sites may seem inconsequential, these studies suggest we are losing species from protected temperate forests around the world.
What causes these losses? Are they particular to these sites or occurring in most temperate forests? Are similar forces at work in these cases or is each different? Although these results are dramatic, they would entirely escape notice except for our having historical data at these sites. Knowing how these forces affect community dynamics improves our ability to identify the particular forces that most threaten biodiversity and is thus essential for wisely managing and restoring these ecosystems.
2.2. Anthropogenic drivers of ecological change
Plant communities respond to many anthropogenic forces. Humans have driven ecological changes for millennia via fire, herding ungulates and tilling fields. However, the scope and rates of anthropogenic environmental change escalated greatly through the 20th century. These forces continue to expand, ensuring that they will increasingly affect ecosystems through the 21st century. Here, I focus on six anthropogenic forces known to greatly affect plant communities. I cite examples from long-term resurveys of sites in Wisconsin, USA, and forestREplot (forestreplot.ugent.be/) resurveys in Europe to illustrate how these forces affect temperate forests. The Wisconsin work capitalizes on high-quality baseline surveys by J.T. Curtis (1959) and his students matched to subsequent resurveys of the same sites 50+ years later (Waller et al. 2012). In temperate forests, most plant species occur in the herb layer (Gilliam et al. 2016). Their shorter stature and life cycles mean that these species respond faster to anthropogenic forces than forest trees.
I first discuss difficulties in studying long-term ecological change. Understanding these help us to explain why good long-term studies are scarce. I then review the different kinds of ecological change that exist and methods to characterize these. These include natural and manipulative experiments, metacommunity models and various statistical approaches. With this background, I then review evidence linking ecological changes to shifts in disturbance regimes, habitat fragmentation, climate change, nitrogen deposition and grazing by herbivores. These concrete examples help us understand the strengths and weaknesses of each approach. Finally, I summarize our current understanding of the forces driving ecological change and hint at new approaches that might help us advance further.
2.2.1. The missing baseline problem
Without adequate baseline data, we cannot detect long-term ecological change or analyze how systems have changed (Magnuson 1990). Missing baselines also prevent us from measuring species losses and biotic homogenization, shifts in community composition and other long-term changes. Worse, the absence of data is often taken to mean an absence of effects. In the few cases where we do have detailed baseline data, we often find serious biotic declines (see opening). It behooves us to seek out historical data whenever possible, to archive them carefully and encourage their wider use (Verheyen et al. 2017). Baseline data are often limited to simple species lists as in the opening examples. Such lists identify the species present but cannot inform us about shifts in relative abundance or community structure. It is more useful to have quantitative data on species abundances at several times (Figure 2.1). More extensive data enable more general and robust conclusions about the kinds of changes occurring and how consistent these changes are. Having data from multiple sites and species also presents challenges; however, in that effects of local circumstances can be complex. Larger datasets provide more power for increasingly sophisticated analyses, allowing us to better understand the patterns and processes of ecological changes.
Figure 2.1.Our ability to characterize ecological change and reliably infer causes rests on having adequate baseline data from many species and sites and a suitable interval between surveys. Such data are rare. For a color version of this figure, see www.iste.co.uk/decocq/ecology.zip
2.2.2. Ecological communities are complex
Many forces drive long-term ecological change, often in combination, complicating our efforts to infer them. These mechanisms operate at different times or places, changing at various scales and rates (Bernhardt-Römermann et al. 2015). Drivers also interact in complex ways, complicating our efforts to infer their relative strengths and patterns of causality. Finally, it is difficult to distinguish systematic patterns of change attributable to any given driver from stochastic changes driven by shifts in local conditions and chance events. Having rich data from many sites (Figure 2.1) gives us the statistical power we need to disentangle multiple drivers while averaging over variable local conditions.
2.3. Kinds of ecological change
Ecologists now use historical data to track many kinds of ecological change. These include changes in species abundance and relative abundance; local colonizations and extirpations; invasions by non-native species; changes in community and habitat structure (e.g. plant density, cover and stature; changes in local (α), among-site (β) and regional (γ) diversity; altered relationships with other species (e.g. the incidence of herbivory and diseases); and shifts in higher-order meta-community properties. At the community level, we track shifts in relative abundance, plant functional traits, species–area relationships, etc. Studies usually report just one or a few types of change, making it difficult to infer how these various kinds of change relate to each other.
2.3.1. Natural community dynamics
To detect and analyze the effects of anthropogenic drivers of ecological change, we must be able to separate those from natural processes affecting community dynamics (as with stochastic noise). Classic ecological work has documented how plant communities respond to variation in climate, soils and patterns of disturbance. (e.g. Curtis 1959). Well-described baseline conditions help here, too. European ecologists use Ellenberg indicator values from indicator species to infer environmental conditions (Ellenberg 1991; Bartelheimer and Poschlod 2016). Recurring natural disturbances including tree falls, fires and floods restart succession, generating well-characterized changes in forest plant communities.
2.3.2. Anthropogenic drivers of ecological change
2.3.2.1. Shifts in disturbance regimes
Farm fields, managed forests, houses, roads and urban areas have displaced prairies, savannas, wetlands and wild forests across much of temperate North America, especially in areas favorable for agriculture. These shifts in land-use greatly reduce natural disturbances like floods and fires, decimating populations of species dependent on these disturbances. In contrast, species adapted to human-disturbed environments thrive. This group includes many invasive species which can themselves displace native species (see section 3.2.5). Species adapted to historically dominant patterns of natural disturbance do poorly follow changes in the type, frequency, scale or intensity of historical disturbance regimes. This undermines the ability of many species to thrive, leading to the pronounced declines in diversity observed when burning declines in fire-dominated systems like prairies (Alstad et al. 2016), savannas and jack-pine-dominated forests on sandy soils (Li and Waller 2015). Floodplain communities are similarly disrupted when flooding either declines or becomes more extreme (Johnson et al. 2016). Recurrent logging similarly threatens many native species by failing to generate the same kinds and amounts of gaps, tip-up mounds, soil structure and coarse woody debris as natural death and tree-falls do in mature temperate forests (Alverson et al. 1994).
2.3.2.2. Habitat loss and fragmentation
GIS analyses of aerial imagery allow us to evaluate how landscape features affect patterns of diversity. Forest patches in southern Wisconsin, like those in other temperate areas, are now smaller and more isolated than they once were. This reduces the abundance of species sensitive to edge, area or isolation effects leading to many extirpations. Edge effects penetrate far into mature forests. The densities of roads and houses within a 5 km radius cause native plant diversity to decline and invasions of exotic species to increase (Rogers et al. 2008). As species that need larger areas or less disturbed conditions disappear locally, the diversity of forest patches declines. Over the latter half of the 20th century, this considerably reduced the diversity of smaller forest patches in southern Wisconsin (Figure 2.2). This strengthened the species–area relation matching how land-bridge islands lose diversity after they become isolated, a tenant of island biogeography (MacArthur and Wilson 1967). Smaller forest patches seem destined to continue losing species if they remain small, isolated and subject to other stresses.
2.3.2.3. Atmospheric nitrogen deposition
Temperate ecosystems in proximity to industrialized urban areas or intensive agriculture are often affected by atmospheric nitrogen (N) deposition. The wet and dry deposition of oxidized forms of N and sulfur cause “acid rain”, leaching needed cations and mobilizing toxic metals. This harms many species. Farmers apply reduced forms of N (as ammonium compounds) as fertilizer, some of which escapes as drift. Higher ambient levels of biologically available N favor plant species that thrive under high N conditions and disfavor plants (like many Fabaceae) that either fix N or perform well under low nutrient conditions (Verheyen et al. 2012). Such “terrestrial eutrophication” commonly acts to simplify plant communities by favoring fast-growing N-loving plants that can then overtop and outcompete more nutrient-thrifty and shorter-statured plant species (Stevens et al. 2018). Across the temperate U.S., higher N deposition acts to depress plant diversity particularly on low nutrient soils (Simkin et al. 2016). Over half the 348 species evaluated are vulnerable to N deposition including many rare habitat specialists and species with low leaf N (Clark et al. 2019). These results confirm that N deposition has driven widespread changes in many plant communities (Figure 2.3).
Figure 2.2.The number of species sustained in smaller forest fragments in southern Wisconsin declined greatly through the latter 20th century. This strengthened the species–area relationship. Data from Rogers et al. (2008)
2.3.2.4. Climate change
Rates of climate change are accelerating, resulting in sizable shifts in rainfall, temperature and seasonality. Shifts in climate are now altering leaf and flowering phenology, shifting elevational and latitudinal ranges, and increasing risks of local extirpation (Parmesan and Yohe 2003). In Wisconsin, night and winter temperatures have increased the most, with local increases in precipitation and more frequent extreme storms (WICCI 2010). These shifts in climate have already shifted the distributions of many species relative to the mid-20th century (Ash et al. 2016). These rates of movement, however, are slower than those of climate change. This creates a growing mismatch between species distributions and ideal climatic conditions. This lag will likely to increase, threatening the ability of many species to persist.
2.3.2.5. Invasions by non-native species
Many species have spread far beyond their original ranges to new regions either by hitching rides with human commerce or via intentional introductions. Some species continue to spread and have become invasive. The absence of coevolved predators and pathogens in their introduced range may play a role in these expansions, particularly when species reallocate resources from defense to competitive ability and enhanced reproduction (Blossey and Notzold 1995). Introduced plants compete for resources and alter the environment, shifting species composition and potentially threatening native species (Callaway and Aschehoug 2000). Prominent invaders of southern Wisconsin forests include Alliaria petiolata, Berberis thunbergii and Rhamnus cathartica. These species reduce plant diversity, tree regeneration and the nesting success of birds. Introduced insects like the Hemlock Woolly Adelgid and the Emerald Ash Borer are eliminating Tsuga canadensis and several Fraxinus species from broad regions. Introduced diseases like Chestnut Blight, Dutch Elm Disease and Beech Bark Disease have already massively altered North American forests.
2.3.2.6. Hyper-abundant herbivores
Deer (cervids) became far more abundant across much of North America and parts of Europe through the 20th century, with diverse and often dramatic cascading impacts on many understory herbaceous and woody plant species as well as forest structure, soil dynamics, and bird and mammal abundances (Alverson et al. 1988; Waller and Alverson 1997; Côté et al. 2004). In northern Wisconsin, species known to resist or tolerate herbivory by white-tailed deer (grasses, sedges and some ferns) increased dramatically over the past 50 years. In contrast, most native forbs and species known to be susceptible to herbivory (e.g. lilies and orchids) suffered large declines (Balgooyen and Waller 1995). Geographic patterns confirm that deer drive long-term shifts in community composition. Islands lacking deer and Indian reservations with few or no deer still support high diversity including species highly palatable to deer now rare elsewhere. Fenced exclosures confirm how deer radically change the cover, diversity and composition of understory plants including the ability of several late-successional species to effectively recruit saplings. Once deer deplete the abundance of palatable species, the scarcity of seed sources and the tendency of deer to seek out favored species means these species are slow to recover.
2.3.2.7. Drivers interact
Although each driver has substantial effects by itself, these drivers also interact. For example, abundant deer tend to favor invasions by weedy plants like Alliaria and Rhamnus by compacting soils, accelerating nutrient cycling, dispersing seeds and preferentially consuming their native competitors (Dobson and Blossey 2015; Shen et al. 2016). One aspect of widespread biotic homogenization in Europe is the replacement of smaller-ranged plant species by those with larger ranges (Staude et al. 2020). Interestingly, these larger-ranged species have higher leaf N and thus probably benefit from N deposition. Additional key interactions surely exist among the drivers reviewed here. Ignoring such interactions leads us to underestimate the scale and complexity of the forces driving ecological change.
2.4. Understanding the forces driving ecological change
Scientists reduce their uncertainty by formulating hypotheses, conducting experiments and analyzing the results from those experiments to test hypotheses. Given the number and scale of human-related factors affecting ecological systems in the 21st century, the scarcity of baseline data, time delays in these effects and how complex these responses may be, we cannot conduct experiments to manipulate all relevant factors. Instead, ecologists infer these forces using various direct and indirect methods.
2.4.1. Natural experiments
Particular patterns of change often give us clues about the mechanisms driving change. We compare sites that differ in local conditions or landscape context to see how these affect the ecological changes observed. In cases where we have systematic differences among regions or locales in environmental conditions, we analyze these differences as “treatments” in a “natural experiment”, for example, by comparing watersheds with or without dams (Johnson et al. 2016) or areas with and without invasive earthworms. Comparing islands in Lake Superior with or without deer confirmed their strong influence (Balgooyen and Waller 1995). Indian reservations also provide natural experiments for assessing the effects of alternative paths of forest and wildlife management (Waller and Reo 2018). When many sites are analyzed together that cover a broad range of conditions, we may gain enough power to perform factorial natural experiments to test multiple drivers and their interactions. We can also relate species’ functional traits to their within and among-site dynamics (Waller et al. 2017).
2.4.2. Metrics of change
By tracking multiple species or whole communities, we can tally local species colonizations and extinctions or increases and decreases in plant size, density or abundance. On the community level, we can track changes in structure and stature as well as species (and trait) composition or overall diversity. Diversity has many components and can be measured in many ways. Spatially, we distinguish among local (α), among-site (β) and overall regional (γ) diversity. Beta diversity reflects differences among biotic communities and thus provides an inverse measure of “biotic homogenization” (McKinney and Lockwood 1999). These concepts and measures have now been sorted into a coherent theory based on Hill numbers (Jost 2007), with natural extensions to measure trait and phylogenetic diversity (Chao et al. 2019).
2.4.3. Can functional traits reveal drivers of change?
Plant functional traits have been hailed as a vehicle to “rebuild” community ecology (McGill et al. 2006). Because plant functional traits reflect how plants respond to environmental conditions (Rolhauser et al. 2021), we gain insights into the forces driving shifts in community composition by examining how traits shift as species rise or fall in abundance. Knowing how traits affect physiological and ecological performance under various conditions allows us to predict how changed conditions likely affect species with different trait profiles (Figure 2.3). For example, systematic increases in nitrogen (N) deposition will tend to favor faster-growing plants with higher leaf N and specific leaf area (fitting many invasive plant species). Habitat fragmentation, in contrast, tends to favor species that disperse well, for example, with small seeds or those that attach, or are eaten by, animals. Deer feed selectively on taller plants with thin nutritious leaves, leaving in their wake plants with better physical and chemical defenses. Tracking shifts in community trait profiles allows us to test these predictions. Researchers now use functional traits to track how communities respond to N-enrichment (Suding et al. 2005), climate change (Heilmeier 2019; Thomas et al. 2020), habitat fragmentation (Vellend et al. 2006) and various kinds of disturbance (Mayfield et al. 2010).
Figure 2.3.Factors that alter plant communities affect species differently depending on their functional traits. This can generate diagnostic trait “signatures”, allowing us to discriminate among drivers by tracking shifts in community trait profiles. For a color version of this figure, see www.iste.co.uk/decocq/ecology.zip
2.4.4. Vectors of change – ordination
Since the days of Whittaker and Curtis in the 1950s, ecologists have used multivariate methods to analyze plant community composition (Shipley 2021). Multivariate approaches are also useful for analyzing how communities respond to drivers of ecological change. For example, ordination allows us to visualize and compare patterns of community change. Analyzing both baseline and resurvey data together allows us to construct vectors reflecting how communities at each site have shifted in composition (Figure 2.4).
We can then assess how these changes differ among sites, regions or community types. Parallel vectors represent consistent responses. Converging vectors indicate biotic homogenization. Forests in Wisconsin show somewhat parallel changes but fragmented southern forests have clearly changed more. We can extend our use of ordination by examining how environmental factors (e.g. soil or landscape conditions) and plant traits covary (or “load”) with ordination axes. Environmental factors that covary strongly with vectors of community (or trait) changes at particular sites are candidate likely drivers of those changes. Shifts in plant traits indicate how plant characteristics affect plant responses to drivers. These multivariate approaches deserve wider application.
Figure 2.4.Vectors of community change. Left: NMDS ordinations showing how the composition of plant communities in the fragmented deciduous forests of southern Wisconsin (solid points on left) and more continuous forests in northern Wisconsin (empty circles on right) changed over the past half-century. Right: placing the origins of change vectors together reveals that forests in both regions have shifted similarly, but that southern forests have changed more
