Monsoon forced evolution of savanna and the spread of agro-pastoralism in peninsular India

Abstract An unresolved issue in the vegetation ecology of the Indian subcontinent is whether its savannas, characterized by relatively open formations of deciduous trees in C4-grass dominated understories, are natural or anthropogenic. Historically, these ecosystems have widely been regarded as anth...

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Autores principales:	Nils Riedel, Dorian Q. Fuller, Norbert Marwan, Constantin Poretschkin, Nathani Basavaiah, Philip Menzel, Jayashree Ratnam, Sushma Prasad, Dirk Sachse, Mahesh Sankaran, Saswati Sarkar, Martina Stebich
Formato:	article
Lenguaje:	EN
Publicado:	Nature Portfolio 2021
Materias:	Medicine R Science Q
Acceso en línea:	https://doaj.org/article/a58a18088f254c8d984689284a3a4cbc
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spelling	oai:doaj.org-article:a58a18088f254c8d984689284a3a4cbc2021-12-02T14:53:43ZMonsoon forced evolution of savanna and the spread of agro-pastoralism in peninsular India10.1038/s41598-021-88550-82045-2322https://doaj.org/article/a58a18088f254c8d984689284a3a4cbc2021-04-01T00:00:00Zhttps://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-021-88550-8https://doaj.org/toc/2045-2322Abstract An unresolved issue in the vegetation ecology of the Indian subcontinent is whether its savannas, characterized by relatively open formations of deciduous trees in C4-grass dominated understories, are natural or anthropogenic. Historically, these ecosystems have widely been regarded as anthropogenic-derived, degraded descendants of deciduous forests. Despite recent work showing that modern savannas in the subcontinent fall within established bioclimatic envelopes of extant savannas elsewhere, the debate persists, at least in part because the regions where savannas occur also have a long history of human presence and habitat modification. Here we show for the first time, using multiple proxies for vegetation, climate and disturbances from high-resolution, well-dated lake sediments from Lonar Crater in peninsular India, that neither anthropogenic impact nor fire regime shifts, but monsoon weakening during the past ~ 6.0 kyr cal. BP, drove the expansion of savanna at the expense of forests in peninsular India. Our results provide unambiguous evidence for a climate-induced origin and spread of the modern savannas of peninsular India at around the mid-Holocene. We further propose that this savannization preceded and drove the introduction of agriculture and development of sedentism in this region, rather than vice-versa as has often been assumed.Nils RiedelDorian Q. FullerNorbert MarwanConstantin PoretschkinNathani BasavaiahPhilip MenzelJayashree RatnamSushma PrasadDirk SachseMahesh SankaranSaswati SarkarMartina StebichNature PortfolioarticleMedicineRScienceQENScientific Reports, Vol 11, Iss 1, Pp 1-13 (2021)
institution	DOAJ
collection	DOAJ
language	EN
topic	Medicine R Science Q
spellingShingle	Medicine R Science Q Nils Riedel Dorian Q. Fuller Norbert Marwan Constantin Poretschkin Nathani Basavaiah Philip Menzel Jayashree Ratnam Sushma Prasad Dirk Sachse Mahesh Sankaran Saswati Sarkar Martina Stebich Monsoon forced evolution of savanna and the spread of agro-pastoralism in peninsular India
description	Abstract An unresolved issue in the vegetation ecology of the Indian subcontinent is whether its savannas, characterized by relatively open formations of deciduous trees in C4-grass dominated understories, are natural or anthropogenic. Historically, these ecosystems have widely been regarded as anthropogenic-derived, degraded descendants of deciduous forests. Despite recent work showing that modern savannas in the subcontinent fall within established bioclimatic envelopes of extant savannas elsewhere, the debate persists, at least in part because the regions where savannas occur also have a long history of human presence and habitat modification. Here we show for the first time, using multiple proxies for vegetation, climate and disturbances from high-resolution, well-dated lake sediments from Lonar Crater in peninsular India, that neither anthropogenic impact nor fire regime shifts, but monsoon weakening during the past ~ 6.0 kyr cal. BP, drove the expansion of savanna at the expense of forests in peninsular India. Our results provide unambiguous evidence for a climate-induced origin and spread of the modern savannas of peninsular India at around the mid-Holocene. We further propose that this savannization preceded and drove the introduction of agriculture and development of sedentism in this region, rather than vice-versa as has often been assumed.
format	article
author	Nils Riedel Dorian Q. Fuller Norbert Marwan Constantin Poretschkin Nathani Basavaiah Philip Menzel Jayashree Ratnam Sushma Prasad Dirk Sachse Mahesh Sankaran Saswati Sarkar Martina Stebich
author_facet	Nils Riedel Dorian Q. Fuller Norbert Marwan Constantin Poretschkin Nathani Basavaiah Philip Menzel Jayashree Ratnam Sushma Prasad Dirk Sachse Mahesh Sankaran Saswati Sarkar Martina Stebich
author_sort	Nils Riedel
title	Monsoon forced evolution of savanna and the spread of agro-pastoralism in peninsular India
title_short	Monsoon forced evolution of savanna and the spread of agro-pastoralism in peninsular India
title_full	Monsoon forced evolution of savanna and the spread of agro-pastoralism in peninsular India
title_fullStr	Monsoon forced evolution of savanna and the spread of agro-pastoralism in peninsular India
title_full_unstemmed	Monsoon forced evolution of savanna and the spread of agro-pastoralism in peninsular India
title_sort	monsoon forced evolution of savanna and the spread of agro-pastoralism in peninsular india
publisher	Nature Portfolio
publishDate	2021
url	https://doaj.org/article/a58a18088f254c8d984689284a3a4cbc
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Monsoon forced evolution of savanna and the spread of agro-pastoralism in peninsular India

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