Article Dans Une Revue Forests Année : 2025

Holocene Forest Dynamics in Western Mediterranean Islands: Rates, Periodicity, and Trends

Fabrizio Michelangeli
Elisa de Luca
Donatella Magri
Simone de Santis
Alessandra Celant
  • Fonction : Auteur
Matteo Vacchi
Jordi Revelles
Rita Teresa Melis
Juan Ochando
José Carrión
Roberta Pini
Gabriel Servera-Vives
Federico Di Rita
  • Fonction : Auteur
  • PersonId : 1540952

Résumé

The forest ecosystems of large Mediterranean islands are critical hubs of evolutionary diversity with unique floristic composition and distinctive vegetation patterns reflecting long-term population dynamics and ecological legacies. Mediterranean islands provide invaluable natural archives, preserving crucial insights into the resilience of past forest ecosystems and their responses to climate variability. In this paper, we provide a comprehensive overview of the Holocene vegetation history of major western Mediterranean islands, with the twofold aim of examining the timing, extent, and rates of vegetation changes over the last few thousand years, and evaluating the influence of Rapid Climate Changes (RCCs) on forest ecosystems. The rate of change analysis allowed the identification of a distinct pattern of rapid shifts in forest composition, corresponding to periods of climate instability. These shifts align with the periodicity of Bond events, suggesting synchronicity between changes in forest ecosystems and centennial-scale climatic oscillations at a supra-regional scale. A REDFIT spectral analysis applied to palynological proxies of forest cover changes identified prominent periodicities suggesting a direct influence of solar activity and/or a relation with complex ocean-atmosphere circulation mechanisms triggered by global climate forcings.

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hal-05066302 , version 1 (13-05-2025)

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Fabrizio Michelangeli, Elisa de Luca, Donatella Magri, Simone de Santis, Alessandra Celant, et al.. Holocene Forest Dynamics in Western Mediterranean Islands: Rates, Periodicity, and Trends. Forests, 2025, 16 (5), pp.808. ⟨10.3390/f16050808⟩. ⟨hal-05066302⟩
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