Land use and climate change pose serious threats to biodiversity, especially in the Afrotropics. This region, which includes Africa and the southern Arabian Peninsula, is under observation by a team of researchers led by Sarah Ivory from Penn State University. They received a substantial $13.88 million grant from the European Research Council to explore how human actions and climate shifts have influenced landscapes and biodiversity here over the past 6,000 years.
The project, called EcoArch, gathers experts in various fields such as archaeology, paleoecology, and land-cover modeling. Together, they aim to unravel how humans have interacted with their environment over millennia. Ivory emphasizes that our current ecosystems are shaped by countless climatic and biological factors over time, with human impact being significant in Africa for longer than anywhere else on the globe.
In collaboration with other noted scientists, Ivory’s team will use advanced methods like stable isotopes and ancient DNA analysis. They’ll also apply artificial intelligence to identify pollen from lake cores. These tools will help create a clearer picture of local, regional, and continental climate changes.
Today, nearly one billion people live in the African and Arabian tropical regions, facing severe effects from climate change. However, there’s a lack of in-depth data on past environmental changes and their impacts on communities. EcoArch aims to fill this void. By producing detailed reconstructions of historical land cover and climate, the research will enhance predictions about future scenarios.
Ivory believes this project can revolutionize how scientists study the past. Currently, gathering ancient data is slow and often incomplete. But with new automated techniques, her team plans to build extensive datasets of fossil pollen across Africa, capturing six millennia of vegetation change.
Interestingly, human interaction with landscapes isn’t solely negative. For thousands of years, people have cultivated healthy ecosystems. Understanding these complex relationships is crucial for future conservation efforts. As Ivory points out, without recognizing how human activities influence landscapes, we can’t fully predict how ecosystems might respond to ongoing climate changes.
The EcoArch project stands to not only shed light on the interplay between climate, vegetation, and human activity but also engage a network of African scientists. This collaborative effort aims to generate a vast amount of data, ultimately helping local communities adapt to the evolving landscape.
