Global response of fire activity to late Quaternary grazer extinctions
Global response of fire activity to late Quaternary grazer extinctions
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DOI：
10.1126/science.abj1580
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发表时间：
2021-11-26
期刊：
影响因子：
56.9
通讯作者：
Staver, A. Carla
中科院分区：
文献类型：
--
作者：
Karp, Allison T.;Faith, J. Tyler;Staver, A. Carla
由于气候的影响，火活动在全球范围内变化很大，但在广泛的时空尺度上，草食动物对火活动的可能影响是未知的。在这里，我们使用第四纪晚期的大型食草动物灭绝作为一个全球性的排斥实验，研究草地生态系统古火活动（通过木炭代理）的响应大陆灭绝的严重程度的差异。草生态系统火灾活动增加，以应对草食动物灭绝，与更大的增加遭受最大损失的食草动物的大陆;浏览器的下降没有这样的影响。这些变化表明，草食动物可以对火灾产生地球系统规模的影响，在预测过去和未来全球火灾活动的变化时，应明确考虑草食动物的影响。
Fire activity varies substantially at global scales because of the influence of climate, but at broad spatiotemporal scales, the possible effects of herbivory on fire activity are unknown. Here, we used late Quaternary large-bodied herbivore extinctions as a global exclusion experiment to examine the responses of grassy ecosystem paleofire activity (through charcoal proxies) to continental differences in extinction severity. Grassy ecosystem fire activity increased in response to herbivore extinction, with larger increases on continents that suffered the largest losses of grazers; browser declines had no such effect. These shifts suggest that herbivory can have Earth system-scale effects on fire and that herbivore impacts should be explicitly considered when predicting changes in past and future global fire activity.