Professional Documents
Culture Documents
How Virgin Is A Virgin Forest
How Virgin Is A Virgin Forest
circulation models, and (ii) intermediate- with an increased AMO (16). This same 3. B. Lemley, Discover 23, 35 (September 2002).
complexity models with zonally averaged model proposes that it is only Labrador Sea 4. IPCC, Climate Change 2001, The Scientific Basis.
Contribution of Working Group I to the Third Scientific
ocean components. Both suites of models Water formation that is susceptible to col- Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on
are known to be more sensitive to freshwa- lapse in response to global warming. Climate Change, J. T. Houghton et al., Eds. (Cambridge
ter perturbations. In the first class of mod- In light of the paleoclimate record and Univ. Press, Cambridge, 2001).
els, a small perturbation away from the our understanding of the contemporary cli- 5. GRIP Project Members, Nature 364, 203 (1993).
6. A. J. Weaver, C. Hillaire-Marcel, Geosci. Can., in
present climate leads to large systematic mate system, it is safe to say that global
press.
errors in the salinity fields (as large flux warming will not lead to the onset of a new 7. A. Berger, M. F. Loutre, Science 297, 1287 (2002).
adjustments are applied) that then build up ice age. These same records suggest that it 8. D. C. Barber et al., Nature 400, 344 (1999).
to cause dramatic AMO transitions. In the is highly unlikely that global warming will 9. A. Kuijpers et al., Mar. Geol. 195, 109 (2003).
second class of models, the convection and lead to a widespread collapse of the 10. C. Hillaire-Marcel, A. de Vernal, G. Bilodeau, A. J.
Weaver, Nature 410, 1073 (2001).
sinking of water masses are coupled (there AMOdespite the appealing possibility 11. R. A. Wood, A. B. Keen, J. F. B. Mitchell, J. M. Gregory,
is no horizontal structure). In contrast, raised in two recent studies (18, 19)al- Nature 399, 572 (1999).
newer nonflux-adjusted models find a though it is possible that deep convection 12. A. de Vernal et al ., Paleoceanography 17, 2:1
more stable AMO under future conditions in the Labrador Sea will cease. Such an (2002).
13. P. R. Gent, Geophys. Res. Lett. 28, 1023 (2001).
of climate change (11, 13, 14). event would have much more minor conse-
14. M. Latif, E. Roeckner, U. Mikolajewicz, R. Voss, J. Clim.
Even the recent observations of freshen- quences on the climate downstream over 13, 1809 (2000).
ing in the North Atlantic (15) (a reduction Europe. 15. R. Curry, B. Dickson, I. Yashayaev, Nature 426, 826
of salinity due to the addition of freshwater) (2003).
appear to be consistent with the projections References 16. P. Wu, R. Wood, P. Stott, Geophys. Res. Lett. 31 (2),
1. S. Rahmstorf, New Scientist 153, 26 (8 February 10.129/2003GL018584 (2004).
of perhaps the most sophisticated nonflux-
ECOLOGY
Interestingly, abandonment of the land fol-
lowing catastrophic depopulation between
How Virgin 1600 and 1700 A.D. resulted in extensive
reforestation in many areas. The Upper
Xingu region of Brazil now comprises the
Is Virgin Rainforest? largest contiguous tract of tropical forest in
the southern peripheries of the Amazon.
K. J. Willis, L. Gillson, T. M. Brncic A combination of archaeological and
paleoecological studies reveals a similar
onservation biologists increasingly standing the resilience and recovery of story in the lowland Congo basin. Here,
Sou
Southern
outh Thailand d
Prehistoric
Preh
eh
h arboric
boriculture
ure
ree
and land
la m managem
anageme
nageme
ageme
gemen
emen
ment
ent
nt
from 800
000
00
0 yye
yea
years
ears
ars
rs
saag
ago
goo
Central Amazonia
maz
mazonia
zonia
Anthropogenic
Ant
Anthhropoge
oppogenic
terra preta soils
lss
from
m 355 years ago
500
Gabon
G
Iron-working furnaces
ace
e
from 961 B.C.
Papua
apua
ua New
N w Guinea
G
Agriculture
Agr culture from
fr
700
000 yye
years
ea ago
e
Anthropogenic modification of virgin tropical rainforest. The map been disturbed by prehistoric human settlements but had subsequently
indicates the three largest undisturbed rainforest blocks remaining world- regenerated once the populations moved on or died out. This suggests
wide. These are located in the Amazon basin, the Congo basin, and that given sufficient time, tropical rainforests disturbed by modern human
Southeast Asia (Indo-Malay region). Evidence is accumulating from ar- activities may be able to regenerate.
chaeological and paleoecological studies that each of these regions had
turbance has affected the composition and acceptable to suggest that land loss caused vation of newly cleared regions and should
diversity of present-day species. Archae- by previous human activities was too small be routinely incorporated into restoration
ological and archaeobotanical evidence sug- to have had a major impact and therefore planning. These approaches have been suc-
gest that agriculture (including the cultiva- cannot be compared to present-day losses. cessfully applied to conservation of mid-
tion of bananas) was established ~7000 This point is reinforced by current esti- latitude forests (13) but have yet to be ap-
years ago in Papua New Guinea (9) and that mates suggesting that the main agent of de- plied systematically to some of the most di-
the lowland rainforests of Thailand have forestation in the tropical forests, account- verse but threatened forests on Earth.
been managed from as early as 8000 years ing for up to two-thirds of the annual loss,
ago. In the rainforests of Thailand, human is slash-and-burn farming (12). Thus, al- References and Notes
occupation and management of the land though the rate and extent of forest clear- 1. A. Balmford et al, Science 297, 950 (2002).
2. F. Achard et al, Science 297, 999 (2002).
may have increased tree diversity (10). ance might be much greater today, in many 3. B. Glaser, L. Haumaier, G. Guggenberger, W. Zech,
Finally, in the Solomon Islands, evidence cases, the process is comparable to prehis- Naturwissenschaften 88, 37 (2001).
from archaeology, ecology, and oral history toric losses. Second, in most examples of 4. M. J. Heckenberger et al., Science 301, 1710 (2003).
suggests that the population of New Georgia prehistoric disturbance there was subse- 5. L. J. T. White, African Rain Forest Ecology and
Conservation, B. Weber, L. J. T. White, A. Vedder, L.
in 1800 may have been twice that of today, quent forest regeneration. These tropical Naughton-Treves, Eds. (Yale Univ. Press, New Haven,
with settlements of up to 7000 people. Thus, ecosystems are not as fragile as often por- CT, 2001), p. 3.
this apparently pristine island rainforest may trayed and in fact are quite resilient. Left for 6. C. M. Mbida et al., J. Arch. Science 27, 151 (2000).
be a consequence of regeneration over the long enough, forests will almost certainly 7. R. Oslisly, African Rain Forest Ecology and Con-
servation, B. Weber, L. J. T. White, A. Vedder, L.
past 150 years, following population decline regenerate. Third, a long-term paleoecolog- Naughton-Treves, Eds. (Yale Univ. Press, New Haven,
and migration to coastal regions (11). The ical record enables realistic estimates to be CT, 2001), p. 101.
enrichment of these present-day island rain- made about the time it takes for a forest to 8. T. van Gemerden et al., J. Biogeogr. 30, 1381 (2003).
9. T. P. Denham et al., Science 301, 189 (2003).
CREDIT: PRESTON HUEY/SCIENCE
forests in secondary tree species adds fur- regenerate after abandonment. It also pro- 10. L. Kealhofer, Asian Perspect. 42, 72 (2003).
ther support to this possibility. vides a quantitative assessment of forest 11. T. Bayliss-Smith et al., Ambio 32, 346 (2003).
Beyond pure interest in the antiquity of composition before and after disturbance, 12. N. Myers, Protecting the Protected: Managing
tropical rainforests and how humans may providing detailed information on what is Biodiversity for Sustainability, T. ORiordan, S. Stoll,
Eds. (Cambridge Univ. Press, Cambridge, UK, 2002), p.
have shaped them, these studies have im- missing from, or added to, the forest when 46.
portant implications for conservation biolo- it regenerates. Such information is critical 13. D. R. Foster, J. Biogeogr. 29, 1269 (2002).
gy. First, they indicate that it is no longer to the management and long-term conser- 14. We thank K. D. Bennett for helpful comments.
If you wish to distribute this article to others, you can order high-quality copies for your
colleagues, clients, or customers by clicking here.
Updated information and services, including high-resolution figures, can be found in the online
version of this article at:
http://www.sciencemag.org/content/304/5669/402.full.html
A list of selected additional articles on the Science Web sites related to this article can be
found at:
http://www.sciencemag.org/content/304/5669/402.full.html#related
This article cites 10 articles, 4 of which can be accessed free:
http://www.sciencemag.org/content/304/5669/402.full.html#ref-list-1
This article has been cited by 53 article(s) on the ISI Web of Science
This article has been cited by 17 articles hosted by HighWire Press; see:
http://www.sciencemag.org/content/304/5669/402.full.html#related-urls
This article appears in the following subject collections:
Ecology
http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/collection/ecology
Science (print ISSN 0036-8075; online ISSN 1095-9203) is published weekly, except the last week in December, by the
American Association for the Advancement of Science, 1200 New York Avenue NW, Washington, DC 20005. Copyright
2004 by the American Association for the Advancement of Science; all rights reserved. The title Science is a
registered trademark of AAAS.