Detecting past changes in vegetation resilience in the context of a changing climate

Abstract

Anthropogenic climate change is continuously altering ecological responses to disturbance and must be accounted for when examining ecological resilience. One way to measure resilience in ecological datasets is by considering the amount and duration of change from a baseline created by perturbations, such as disturbances like wildfire. Recovery occurs when ecological conditions return to equilibrium, meaning that no subsequent changes can be attributed to the effects of the disturbance, but climate change often causes the recovered state to differ from the previous baseline. The palaeoecological record provides an opportunity to examine these expectations because palaeoclimates changed continuously; few periods existed when environmental conditions were stationary. Here we demonstrate a framework for examining resilience in palaeoecological records against the backdrop of a non-stationary climate by considering resilience as two components of (i) resistance (magnitude of change) and (ii) recovery (time required to return) to predicted equilibrium values. Measuring these components of resilience in palaeoecological records requires high-resolution fossil (e.g. pollen) records, local palaeoclimate reconstructions, a model to predict ecological change in response to climate change, and disturbance records measured at the same spatial scale as the ecological (e.g. vegetation history) record. Resistance following disturbance is measured as the deviation of the fossil record from the ecological state predicted by the palaeoclimate records, and recovery time is measured as the time required for the fossil record to return to predicted values. We show that some cases may involve nearly persistent equilibrium despite large climate changes, but that others can involve a shift to a new state without any complete recovery.