Rapid climate change and variability of settlement patterns in Iberia during the Late Pleistocene

2012 ◽  
Vol 274 ◽  
pp. 179-204 ◽  
Author(s):  
Isabell Schmidt ◽  
Marcel Bradtmöller ◽  
Martin Kehl ◽  
Andreas Pastoors ◽  
Yvonne Tafelmaier ◽  
...  
2012 ◽  
Vol 247 ◽  
pp. 38-49 ◽  
Author(s):  
Marcel Bradtmöller ◽  
Andreas Pastoors ◽  
Bernhard Weninger ◽  
Gerd-Christian Weniger

Geology ◽  
2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Peter H. Schultz ◽  
R. Scott Harris ◽  
Sebastián Perroud ◽  
Nicolas Blanco ◽  
Andrew J. Tomlinson

Twisted and folded silicate glasses (up to 50 cm across) concentrated in certain areas across the Atacama Desert near Pica (northern Chile) indicate nearly simultaneous (seconds to minutes) intense airbursts close to Earth’s surface near the end of the Pleistocene. The evidence includes mineral decompositions that require ultrahigh temperatures, dynamic modes of emplacement for the glasses, and entrained meteoritic dust. Thousands of identical meteoritic grains trapped in these glasses show compositions and assemblages that resemble those found exclusively in comets and CI group primitive chondrites. Combined with the broad distribution of the glasses, the Pica glasses provide the first clear evidence for a cometary body (or bodies) exploding at a low altitude. This occurred soon after the arrival of proto-Archaic hunter-gatherers and around the time of rapid climate change in the Southern Hemisphere.


Author(s):  
Eric Post

This chapter explores the dynamics of plant and animal species and species assemblages during the Earth's most recent period of rapid warming to garner insights into the potential consequences of future rapid climate change. From the perspective of climate change ecology, the Late Pleistocene and the Pleistocene–Holocene transition are relevant because they represent the end of a prolonged period of climatic fluctuation on multiple temporal scales followed by rapid warming. Not only did Earth's major biomes undergo extensive compositional changes during the late Quaternary and near the termination of the Pleistocene epoch, they also underwent geographically large-scale redistributions, and did so rapidly, in some cases on the scale of decades. If rapid warming during the Pleistocene–Holocene transition contributed to—or even acted as the main driver of—mass extinctions, such a scenario would seem to suggest that contemporary climate change has a similar capacity to precipitate species losses.


2019 ◽  
Vol 3 (2) ◽  
pp. 221-231 ◽  
Author(s):  
Rebecca Millington ◽  
Peter M. Cox ◽  
Jonathan R. Moore ◽  
Gabriel Yvon-Durocher

Abstract We are in a period of relatively rapid climate change. This poses challenges for individual species and threatens the ecosystem services that humanity relies upon. Temperature is a key stressor. In a warming climate, individual organisms may be able to shift their thermal optima through phenotypic plasticity. However, such plasticity is unlikely to be sufficient over the coming centuries. Resilience to warming will also depend on how fast the distribution of traits that define a species can adapt through other methods, in particular through redistribution of the abundance of variants within the population and through genetic evolution. In this paper, we use a simple theoretical ‘trait diffusion’ model to explore how the resilience of a given species to climate change depends on the initial trait diversity (biodiversity), the trait diffusion rate (mutation rate), and the lifetime of the organism. We estimate theoretical dangerous rates of continuous global warming that would exceed the ability of a species to adapt through trait diffusion, and therefore lead to a collapse in the overall productivity of the species. As the rate of adaptation through intraspecies competition and genetic evolution decreases with species lifetime, we find critical rates of change that also depend fundamentally on lifetime. Dangerous rates of warming vary from 1°C per lifetime (at low trait diffusion rate) to 8°C per lifetime (at high trait diffusion rate). We conclude that rapid climate change is liable to favour short-lived organisms (e.g. microbes) rather than longer-lived organisms (e.g. trees).


Mousaion ◽  
2016 ◽  
Vol 33 (3) ◽  
pp. 1-24
Author(s):  
Emmanuel Elia ◽  
Stephen Mutula ◽  
Christine Stilwell

This study was part of broader PhD research which investigated how access to, and use of, information enhances adaptation to climate change and variability in the agricultural sector in semi-arid Central Tanzania. The research was carried out in two villages using Rogers’ Diffusion of Innovations theory and model to assess the dissemination of this information and its use by farmers in their adaptation of their farming practices to climate change and variability. This predominantly qualitative study employed a post-positivist paradigm. Some elements of a quantitative approach were also deployed in the data collection and analysis. The principal data collection methods were interviews and focus group discussions. The study population comprised farmers, agricultural extension officers and the Climate Change Adaptation in Africa project manager. Qualitative data were subjected to content analysis whereas quantitative data were analysed to generate mostly descriptive statistics using SPSS.  Key findings of the study show that farmers perceive a problem in the dissemination and use of climate information for agricultural development. They found access to agricultural inputs to be expensive, unreliable and untimely. To mitigate the adverse effects of climate change and variability on farming effectively, the study recommends the repackaging of current and accurate information on climate change and variability, farmer education and training, and collaboration between researchers, meteorology experts, and extension officers and farmers. Moreover, a clear policy framework for disseminating information related to climate change and variability is required.


2021 ◽  
Vol 22 (15) ◽  
pp. 7877
Author(s):  
Fahimeh Shahinnia ◽  
Néstor Carrillo ◽  
Mohammad-Reza Hajirezaei

Environmental adversities, particularly drought and nutrient limitation, are among the major causes of crop losses worldwide. Due to the rapid increase of the world’s population, there is an urgent need to combine knowledge of plant science with innovative applications in agriculture to protect plant growth and thus enhance crop yield. In recent decades, engineering strategies have been successfully developed with the aim to improve growth and stress tolerance in plants. Most strategies applied so far have relied on transgenic approaches and/or chemical treatments. However, to cope with rapid climate change and the need to secure sustainable agriculture and biomass production, innovative approaches need to be developed to effectively meet these challenges and demands. In this review, we summarize recent and advanced strategies that involve the use of plant-related cyanobacterial proteins, macro- and micronutrient management, nutrient-coated nanoparticles, and phytopathogenic organisms, all of which offer promise as protective resources to shield plants from climate challenges and to boost stress tolerance in crops.


Boreas ◽  
2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Daniela Müller ◽  
Rik Tjallingii ◽  
Mateusz Płóciennik ◽  
Tomi P. Luoto ◽  
Bartosz Kotrys ◽  
...  

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