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Science 23 July 2004:
Vol. 305. no. 5683, pp. 484 - 485
DOI: 10.1126/science.1101357
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Perspectives

PALEOECOLOGY:
The Rise and Fall of Forests

H. J. B. Birks and Hilary H. Birks

After a catastrophic disturbance to an ecosystem, there is an initial period of ecosystem buildup, eventually followed (in the absence of another major disturbance) by a decline phase during which ecosystem productivity and plant biomass decrease. In their Perspective, Birks and Birks discuss a recent chronosequence analysis of six types of forest ecosystem that demonstrates how changes in soil composition contribute to ecosystem decline during interglacial periods (Wardle et al.).

The authors are in the Department of Biology, University of Bergen, and the Bjerknes Centre for Climate Research, Bergen, N-5007, Norway. E-mail: john.birks{at}bio.uib.no; hilary.birks{at}bio.uib.no

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THIS ARTICLE HAS BEEN CITED BY OTHER ARTICLES:
Loss of apatite caused irreversible early-Holocene lake acidification.
J. F. Boyle (2007)
The Holocene 17, 543-547
   Abstract »    PDF »


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