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Published Online December 2, 2004
Science DOI: 10.1126/science.1107481

Perspectives

Submitted on November 15, 2004
Accepted on November 24, 2004

Ecological Versus Climatic Thresholds

Mark Maslin 1*

1 Environment Change Research Centre, Department of Geography, University College London, London WC1H 0AP, UK.

* To whom correspondence should be addressed.
Mark Maslin , E-mail: mmaslin{at}geog.ucl.ac.uk

How will the terrestrial vegetation respond to future climate change? In his Perspective, Maslin argues that studies of past climates can help to answer this question. He highlights the report by Jennerjahn et al., who show that ecological or vegetation responses to climatic changes may be delayed if an ecological threshold has to be crossed. In another study, Tzedakis et al. show that once such a threshold is crossed, the vegetation may not necessarily recover with a return to the original climatic conditions. Thus, both the time scale and the reversibility of future ecological changes as a result of global warming remain unclear.


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Science. ISSN 0036-8075 (print), 1095-9203 (online)