Abstract
Identifying refugia— specifically places where species can persist during periods of regionally unsuitable climate— is increasingly important for conservation practitioners and land managers charged with protecting biodiversity in a rapidly warming world. Currently, many researchers assist in this process by building models to predict areas of refugia using climate data projected into the future under different climate scenarios; however, the coarse spatial scale of future climate data can be orders of magnitude larger than the scale of refugia on the landscape. Conservation paleobiology is an emerging field that can contribute to the identification of climate refugia by looking at the macrofossil records contained in sediments to better understand the response of species to past climate change within a small area, and allows us to ground-truth hypotheses about specific areas functioning as climate refugia. Here, we present a conservation paleobiology case study to update vulnerability assessments for subalpine plant species in Acadia National Park and locate potential future refugia on the landscape. We analyzed plant macrofossils in a sediment core from Sargent Mountain Pond in Acadia National Park (Maine, United States) at a fine spatiotemporal resolution to test the hypothesis that the area served as a past climate refugium for the subalpine species it currently hosts. We found that, when compared to a pollen record from a forest hollow core collected on Mount Desert Island, the macrofossils reflect a more stable presence of subalpine taxa throughout the Holocene Climatic Optimum (8,000–5,000 BP) than was observed at lower elevations. Our results indicate the importance of a complementary approach that combines plant macrofossils and pollen in addition to modeling to identify refugia and better understand the vulnerability of species and communities to climate change.
| Original language | English (US) |
|---|---|
| Article number | 1008594 |
| Journal | Frontiers in Ecology and Evolution |
| Volume | 11 |
| DOIs | |
| State | Published - 2023 |
Bibliographical note
Funding Information:Lab work for this project was conducted on unceded territory of the Penobscot Nation and fieldwork was conducted on Wabanaki Confederacy land. Much of the writing and revisions were conducted on Wašiw and Numu land. Many thanks to Katie Glover, Sarah Nelson, and Kate Ruskin for inspiration and support in the completion of CC undergraduate capstone at the University of Maine. Initial core description, imaging, and scanning analysis were provided by the Continental Science Drilling Facility at the University of Minnesota. Mikayla Mason, Mario Williams, and Mac Mackenzie provided helpful support with the macrofossil analysis, and the BEAST Lab provided a supportive and encouraging space for learning and research. Kirsten Dutcher, Nathan Byer, Steve Hromada, and Anjana Parandahaman at the University of Nevada, Reno gave valuable feedback on this manuscript. Chrissy Klenke assisted CC with the map figures. The authors are grateful to Abe Miller-Rushing and the rangers and staff of Acadia National Park, as well as Karen James, Bill Buaas, and volunteers from the Sierra Club and Friends of Acadia for field assistance. We are also grateful to two reviewers, whose comments greatly improved this manuscript.
Publisher Copyright:
Copyright © 2023 Carroll, Gill and McDonough MacKenzie.
Keywords
- climate change vulnerability assessment
- conservation paleobiology
- macrofossils
- refugia
- subalpine
Continental Scientific Drilling Facility tags
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