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Science 6 February 2004:
Vol. 303. no. 5659, pp. 827 - 829
DOI: 10.1126/science.1090795
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Reports

48,000 Years of Climate and Forest Change in a Biodiversity Hot Spot

Mark B. Bush,1*{dagger} Miles R. Silman,2*{dagger} Dunia H. Urrego1

A continuous 48,000-year-long paleoecological record from Neotropical lower montane forest reveals a consistent forest presence and an ice-age cooling of ~5° to 9°C. After 30,000 years of compositional stability, a steady turnover of species marks the 8000-year-long transition from ice-age to Holocene conditions. Although the changes were directional, the rates of community change were no different during this transitional period than in the preceding 30,000-year period of community stability. The warming rate of about 1°C per millennium during the Pleistocene-Holocene transition was an order of magnitude less than the projected changes for the 21st century.

1 Florida Institute of Technology, 150 West University Boulevard, Melbourne, FL 32901–6975, USA.
2 Department of Biology, Wake Forest University, Box 7325, Reynolda Station, Winston Salem, NC 27109–7325, USA.



* These authors contributed equally to this work.

{dagger} To whom correspondence should be addressed. E-mail: mbush{at}fit.edu (M.B.B.); silmanmr{at}wfu.org (M.R.S.)

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