Riedel, N;
Fuller, DQ;
Marwan, N;
Poretschkin, C;
Basavaiah, N;
Menzel, P;
Ratnam, J;
... Stebich, M; + view all
(2021)
Monsoon forced evolution of savanna and the spread of agro-pastoralism in peninsular India.
Scientific Reports
, 11
(1)
, Article 9032. 10.1038/s41598-021-88550-8.
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Abstract
An unresolved issue in the vegetation ecology of the Indian subcontinent is whether its savannas, characterized by relatively open formations of deciduous trees in C4-grass dominated understories, are natural or anthropogenic. Historically, these ecosystems have widely been regarded as anthropogenic-derived, degraded descendants of deciduous forests. Despite recent work showing that modern savannas in the subcontinent fall within established bioclimatic envelopes of extant savannas elsewhere, the debate persists, at least in part because the regions where savannas occur also have a long history of human presence and habitat modification. Here we show for the first time, using multiple proxies for vegetation, climate and disturbances from high-resolution, well-dated lake sediments from Lonar Crater in peninsular India, that neither anthropogenic impact nor fire regime shifts, but monsoon weakening during the past ~ 6.0 kyr cal. BP, drove the expansion of savanna at the expense of forests in peninsular India. Our results provide unambiguous evidence for a climate-induced origin and spread of the modern savannas of peninsular India at around the mid-Holocene. We further propose that this savannization preceded and drove the introduction of agriculture and development of sedentism in this region, rather than vice-versa as has often been assumed.
| Type: | Article |
|---|---|
| Title: | Monsoon forced evolution of savanna and the spread of agro-pastoralism in peninsular India |
| Location: | England |
| Open access status: | An open access version is available from UCL Discovery |
| DOI: | 10.1038/s41598-021-88550-8 |
| Publisher version: | https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-021-88550-8 |
| Language: | English |
| Additional information: | © 2021 Springer Nature Limited. This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/). |
| Keywords: | Biogeochemistry, Biogeography, Climate-change ecology Climate sciences, Ecology, Fire ecology, Forest ecology, Grassland ecology, Palaeoclimate, Palaeoecology, Stable isotope analysis ,Tropical ecology |
| UCL classification: | UCL UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > UCL SLASH UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > UCL SLASH > Faculty of S&HS UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > UCL SLASH > Faculty of S&HS > Institute of Archaeology UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > UCL SLASH > Faculty of S&HS > Institute of Archaeology > Institute of Archaeology Gordon Square |
| URI: | https://discovery.ucl.ac.uk/id/eprint/10127091 |
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