Seabird establishment during regional cooling drove a terrestrial ecosystem shift 5000 years ago

Dulcinea V. Groff; Kit M. Hamley; Trevor J.R. Lessard; Kayla E. Greenawalt; Moriaki Yasuhara; Paul Brickle; Jacquelyn L. Gill

doi:10.1126/sciadv.abb2788

Seabird establishment during regional cooling drove a terrestrial ecosystem shift 5000 years ago

Dulcinea V. Groff, Kit M. Hamley, Trevor J.R. Lessard, Kayla E. Greenawalt, Moriaki Yasuhara, Paul Brickle, Jacquelyn L. Gill

Continental Scientific Drilling Facility

Research output: Contribution to journal › Article › peer-review

Abstract

The coastal tussac (Poa flabellata) grasslands of the Falkland Islands are a critical seabird breeding habitat but have been drastically reduced by grazing and erosion. Meanwhile, the sensitivity of seabirds and tussac to climate change is unknown because of a lack of long-term records in the South Atlantic. Our 14,000-year multiproxy record reveals an ecosystem state shift following seabird establishment 5000 years ago, as marine-derived nutrients from guano facilitated tussac establishment, peat productivity, and increased fire. Seabird arrival coincided with regional cooling, suggesting that the Falkland Islands are a cold-climate refugium. Conservation efforts focusing on tussac restoration should include this terrestrial-marine linkage, although a warming Southern Ocean calls into question the long-term viability of the Falkland Islands as habitat for low-latitude seabirds.

Original language	English (US)
Article number	abb2788
Journal	Science Advances
Volume	6
Issue number	43
DOIs	https://doi.org/10.1126/sciadv.abb2788
State	Published - Oct 23 2020

Bibliographical note

Funding Information:
This research was supported by the U.S. NSF Adaptation to Abrupt Climate Change IGERT program grant DGE-1144423, a Geologic Society of America Graduate Student Research Grant, the Dan and Betty Churchill Fund, the University of Maine Graduate Student Government, >180 crowdfunders, and a LacCore Visiting Student Research Grant.

Publisher Copyright:
Copyright © 2020 The Authors, some rights reserved; exclusive licensee American Association for the Advancement of Science. No claim to original U.S. Government Works. Distributed under a Creative Commons Attribution NonCommercial License 4.0 (CC BY-NC).

Copyright:
Copyright 2020 Elsevier B.V., All rights reserved.

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abstract = "The coastal tussac (Poa flabellata) grasslands of the Falkland Islands are a critical seabird breeding habitat but have been drastically reduced by grazing and erosion. Meanwhile, the sensitivity of seabirds and tussac to climate change is unknown because of a lack of long-term records in the South Atlantic. Our 14,000-year multiproxy record reveals an ecosystem state shift following seabird establishment 5000 years ago, as marine-derived nutrients from guano facilitated tussac establishment, peat productivity, and increased fire. Seabird arrival coincided with regional cooling, suggesting that the Falkland Islands are a cold-climate refugium. Conservation efforts focusing on tussac restoration should include this terrestrial-marine linkage, although a warming Southern Ocean calls into question the long-term viability of the Falkland Islands as habitat for low-latitude seabirds.",

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Seabird establishment during regional cooling drove a terrestrial ecosystem shift 5000 years ago

Abstract

Bibliographical note

PubMed: MeSH publication types

UN SDGs

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